by Diana Palmer
His cheek slid against hers so that he could find her soft lips with his mouth. He kissed her slowly, gently, with aching respect. When he pulled back, her lips followed. With a rough groan, he kissed her again. This time, there was less respect and more blatant hunger in the mouth that ravished hers.
She moaned softly, which brought him to his senses immediately. He drew back, his green eyes glittering with feeling. He wasn’t breathing steadily anymore. Neither was she.
“We would have to climb a tree to find much privacy, and even then, the boys would probably be sitting in the branches,” he said in a hunted tone.
She understood what he meant and flushed. But she laughed, too, because it was very obvious that he found her as attractive as she found him. She smiled into his eyes.
“One day, we will have a house as big as a barn, with doors that lock!” she assured him.
He chuckled softly. “Yes. But for now, we must be patient.” He put her back on her feet with a long sigh. “Not that I feel patient,” he added rakishly.
She laughed. “Nor I.” She looked up at him demurely. “I suppose you have kissed a great many girls.”
“Not so many,” he replied. “And none as unique as you.” His eyes were intent on her flushed face. “I made the best bargain of my life when I enticed you into marriage, Ellen Colby.”
“Thank you,” she said, stumbling over the words.
He pushed back a lock of disheveled dark hair that had escaped from under her hat. “It never occurred to me that a city woman, an aristocrat, would be able to survive living like this. I have felt guilty any number of times when I watched you carry water to the house, and wash clothes as the other women do. I know that you had maids to do such hard labor when you lived at home.”
“I am young and very strong,” she pointed out. “Besides, I have never found a man whom I respected enough to marry, until now. I believe you will make an empire here, in these wilds. But even if I didn’t believe it, I would still be proud to take your name. You are unique, also.”
His eyes narrowed. He bent again and kissed her eyelids shut, with breathless tenderness. “I will work hard to be worthy of your trust, Ellen. I will try never to disappoint you.”
She smiled. “And you will promise never to run me under oak limbs again?” she teased.
“You imp!” He laughed uproariously, hugging her to him like a big brother. “You scamp! What joy you bring to my days.”
“And you to mine,” she replied, hugging him back.
“Daddy! Mr. John and Mrs. Ellen are spooning right here in the middle of the road!” one of Isaac and Mary’s boys yelled.
“Scatter, you varmints, I’m kissing my wife!” John called in mock-rage.
There was amused laughter and the sound of brush rustling.
“So much for the illusion of privacy,” Ellen said, pulling back from him with a wistful sigh. “Shall we get back to the business at hand? Where’s my horse?”
John spied him in the brush, munching on some small green growth of grass he had found there. “He’s found something nice to eat, I’ll wager,” he said.
“I’ll fetch him,” Ellen laughed, and started into the brush.
“Ellen, stop!”
John’s voice, full of authority and fear, halted her with one foot in the act of rising. She stopped and stood very still. He was cursing, using words Ellen had never heard in her life. “Isaac!” he tacked onto the end, “fetch my shotgun! Hurry!”
Ellen closed her eyes. She didn’t have to look down to know why he was so upset. She could hear a rustling sound, like crackling leaves, like softly frying bacon. She had never seen a rattlesnake, but during her visit to Texas with her father, she had heard plenty about them from local people. Apparently they liked to lie in wait and strike out at unsuspecting people who came near them. They could cause death with a bite, or extreme pain and sickness. Ellen was mortally afraid of snakes, in any event. But John would save her. She knew he would.
There were running feet. Crashing brush. The sound of something being thrown and caught, and then the unmistakable sound of a hammer being pulled back.
“Stand very still, darling,” John told her huskily. “Don’t move…a muscle!”
She swallowed, her eyes still closed. She held her breath. There was a horrifying report, like the sound of thunder and lightning striking, near her feet. Flying dirt hit her dungarees. She heard furious thrashing and opened her eyes. For the first time, she looked down. A huge rattlesnake lay dismembered nearby, still writhing in the hot sun.
“Ellen, it didn’t strike you?” John asked at once, wrapping her up in the arm that wasn’t supporting the shotgun. “You’re all right?”
“I am, thanks to you,” she whispered, almost collapsing against him. “What a scare!”
“For both of us,” he said curtly. He bent and kissed the breath out of her, still shaken from the experience. “Don’t ever march into the brush without looking first!”
She smiled under his lips. “You could have caught the brush on fire with that language,” she murmured reproachfully. “Indeed, I think the snake was shocked to death by it!”
He laughed, and kissed her harder. She kissed him back, only belatedly aware of running feet and exclamations when the snake was spotted.
He linked his big hand into her small one. “Luis, bring the horse, if you please. I think we’ve had enough riding practice for one day!”
“Si, señor,” Juan agreed with a chuckle.
* * *
THAT EVENING AROUND the campfire all the talk was of the close call Ellen had with the snake.
“You’re on your way to being a living legend,” John told her as they roasted the victim of his shotgun over the darting orange and yellow tongues of flame. “Not to mention the provider of this delicious delicacy. Roasted rattler.”
Ellen, game as ever, was soon nibbling on her own chunk of it. “It tastes surprisingly like chicken,” she remarked.
John glowered at her. “It does not.”
She grinned at him, and his heart soared. He grinned back.
“If you want another such treat, you will have to teach me how to shoot a gun,” she proposed. “I am never walking into a rattler’s mouth again, not even to provide you with supper!”
“Fair deal,” he responded, while the others laughed uproariously.
* * *
IN THE DAYS that followed, Ellen learned with hard work and sore muscles the rudiments of staying on a horse through the long days of watching over John’s growing herd of cattle.
She also learned how not to shoot a shotgun. Her first acquaintance with the heavy double-barreled gun was a calamity. Having shouldered it too lightly, the report slammed the butt back into her shoulder and gave her a large, uncomfortable bruise. They had to wait until it healed before she could try again. The one good thing was that it made churning butter almost impossible, and she grinned as she watched Mary shoulder that chore.
“You hurt your shoulder on purpose,” Mary chided with laughing dark eyes. “So you wouldn’t have to push this dasher up and down in the churn.”
“You can always get Isaac to teach you how to shoot, and use the same excuse,” Ellen pointed out.
Mary grinned. “Not me. I am not going near a shotgun, not even to get out of such chores!”
Juana agreed wholeheartedly. “Too much bang!”
“I’ll amen that,” Mary agreed.
“I like it,” Ellen mused. She liked even more knowing that John was afraid for her, that he cared about her. He’d even called her “darling” when he’d shot the snake. He wasn’t a man to use endearments normally, which made the verbal slip even more pleasurable. She’d been walking around in a fog of pleasure ever since the rattler almost bit her. She was in love. She hoped that he was feeling something similar, but he’d been much too busy with work to hang around her, except at night. And then there was a very large audience. She sighed, thinking that privacy must be the most valuable comm
odity on earth. Although she was growing every day fonder of her companions, she often wished them a hundred miles away, so that she had even an hour alone with her husband. But patience was golden, she reminded herself. She must wait and hope for that to happen. Right now, survival itself was a struggle.
So was the shotgun. Her shoulder was well enough for a second try a week later. Two new complications, unbeknownst to Ellen, had just presented themselves. There were new mud puddles in the front yard, and her father had come to town and rented a buggy to ride out to visit his only child.
Ellen aimed the shotgun at a tree. The resulting kick made the barrel fly up. A wild turkey, which had been sitting on a limb, suddenly fell to the ground in a limp heap. And Ellen went backward right into the deepest mud puddle the saturated yard could boast.
At that particular moment, her father pulled up in front of the cabin.
Her father looked from Ellen to the turkey to the mud puddle to John. “I see that you are teaching my daughter to bathe and hunt at the same time,” he remarked.
Ellen scrambled to her feet, wiping her hair back with a muddy hand. She was so disheveled, and so dirty, that it was hard for her immaculate father to find her face at all.
He grimaced. “Ellen, darling, I think it might not be a bad idea if you came home with me,” he began uneasily.
She tossed her head, slinging mud onto John, who was standing next to her looking concerned. “I’m only just learning to shoot, Father,” she remarked proudly. “No one is proficient at first. Isn’t that so, John?”
“Uh, yes,” John replied, but without his usual confidence.
Her father looked from one to the other and then to the turkey. “I suppose buying meat from the market in town is too expensive?” he asked.
“I like variety. We had rattlesnake last week, in fact,” Ellen informed him. “It was delicious.”
Her father shook his head. “Your grandmother is going to have heart failure if I tell her what I’ve seen here. And young man, this house of yours…!” He spread an expansive hand helplessly.
“The sooner we get our spur line,” Ellen told her father, “the quicker we will have a real house instead of merely a cabin.”
John nodded hopefully.
Terrance Colby sighed heavily. “I’ll see what I can do,” he promised.
They both smiled. “Will you stay for dinner?” Ellen invited, glancing behind her. She grinned. “We’re having turkey!”
Her father declined, unwilling to share the sad surroundings that his daughter seemed to find so exciting. There were three families living in that one cabin, he noted, and he wasn’t certain that he was democratic enough to appreciate such close quarters. It didn’t take a mind reader to note that Ellen and John had no privacy. That might be an advantage, he mused, if Ellen decided to come home. There would be no complications. But she seemed happy as a lark, and unless he was badly mistaken, that young man John Jacobs was delighted with her company. His wife’s mother was not going to be happy when he got up enough nerve to tell her what had happened to Ellen. She was just on her way home from a vacation in Italy. Perhaps the ship would be blown off course and she would not get home for several months, he mused. Otherwise, Ellen was going to have a very unhappy visitor in the near future.
He did make time to see John’s growing herd of cattle, and he noticed that the young man had a fine lot of very healthy steers. He’d already seen how enterprising Ellen was with her dressmaking and dairy sales. Now he saw a way to help John become quickly self-sufficient.
* * *
WORD CAME the following week that Ellen’s father was busy buying up right of way for the spur that would run to John’s ranch. Not only that, he had become a customer for John’s yearling steers, which he planned to feed to the laborers who were already hard at work on another stretch of his railroad. The only difficulty was that John was going to have to drive the steers north to San Antonio for Terrance Colby. Colby would be there waiting for him in a week. That wasn’t a long cattle drive, certainly not as far as Kansas, but south Texas was still untamed and dangerous country. It would be risky. But John knew it would be worth the risk if he could deliver the beef.
So John and his men left, reluctantly on John’s part, to drive the steers north. He and his fellow cowhands went around to all the other ranches, gathering up their steers, making sure they appropriated only the cattle that bore their 3J brand for the drive.
“I don’t want to go,” John told Ellen as they stood together, briefly alone, at the corral. “But I must protect our investment. There will be six of us to drive the herd, and we are all armed and well able to handle any trouble. Isaac and the older boys are going with me, but Luis will stay here to look after the livestock and all of you.”
She sighed, smoothing her arms over the sleeves of his shirt, enjoying the feel of the smooth muscles under it. “I do not like the idea of you going away. But I know that it is necessary, so I’ll be brave.”
“I don’t like leaving you, either,” he said bluntly. He bent and kissed her hungrily. “When I return, perhaps we can afford a single night away from here,” he whispered roughly. “I am going mad to have you in my arms without a potential audience!”
“As I am,” she choked, kissing him back hungrily.
He lifted her clear of the ground in his embrace, flying as they kissed without restraint. Finally, he forced himself to put her back down and he stepped away. There was a ruddy flush on his high cheekbones, and his green eyes were fierce. Her face was equally flushed, but her eyes were soft and dreamy, and her mouth was swollen.
She smiled up at him bravely, despite her concern. “Don’t get shot.”
He grimaced. “I’ll do my best. You stay within sight of the cabin and Luis, even when you’re milking those infernal cows. And don’t go to town without him.”
She didn’t mention that it would be suicide to take Luis away from guarding the cattle, even for that long. She and the women would have to work something out, so that they could sell their dresses and butter and milk in town. But she would spare him the worry.
“We’ll be very careful,” she promised.
He sighed, his hand resting on the worn butt of his .45 caliber pistol. “We’ll be back as soon as humanly possible. Your father…”
“If he comes to town, I’ll go there to wait for you,” she promised, a lie, because she’d never leave Mary and Juana by themselves, even with Luis and a shotgun around.
“Possibly that’s what you should do, anyway,” he murmured thoughtfully.
“I can’t leave here now,” she replied. “There’s too much at stake. I’ll help take care of our ranch. You take care of our profit margin.”
He chuckled, surprised out of his worries. “I’ll be back before you miss me too much,” he said, bending to kiss her again, briefly. “Stay close to the cabin.”
“I will. Have a safe trip.”
He swung into the saddle, shouting for Isaac and the boys. The women watched them ride away. The cattle had already been pooled in a nearby valley, and the drovers were ready to get underway. As Ellen watched her tall husband ride away, she realized why he’d wanted his railroad spur so badly. Not only was it dangerous to drive cattle a long way to a railhead, but the potential risk to the men and animals was great. Not only was there a constant threat from thieves, there were floods and thunderstorms that could decimate herds. She prayed that John and Isaac and the men going with them would be safe. It was just as well that Luis was staying at the ranch to help safeguard the breeding bulls and cows, and the calves that were too young for market. Not that she was going to shirk her own responsibilities, Ellen thought stubbornly. Nobody was stealing anything around here while she could get her hands on a gun!
* * *
THE THREAT CAME unexpectedly just two days after John and the others had left south Texas for San Antonio on the cattle drive.
Ellen had just carried a bucketful of milk to the kitchen when she peered out the ope
n, glassless window at two figures on horseback, watching the cabin. She called softly to Juana and Mary.
Juana crossed herself. “It is Comanches!” she exclaimed. “They come to raid the cattle!”
“Well, they’re not raiding them today,” Ellen said angrily. “I’ll have to ride out and get Luis and the boys,” she said. “There’s nothing else for it, and I’ll have to go bareback. I’ll never have time to saddle a horse with them sitting out there.”
“It is too dangerous,” Juana exclaimed. “You can hardly ride a saddled horse, and those men are Comanches. They are the finest riders of any men, even my Luis. You will never outrun them!”
Ellen muttered under her breath. They had so few cattle that even the loss of one or two could mean the difference between bankruptcy and survival. Well, she decided, there was only one thing to do. She grabbed up the shotgun, loaded it, and started out the back door, still in her dress and apron.
“No!” Mary almost screamed. “Are you crazy? Do you know what they do to white women?!”
Ellen didn’t say a word. She kept walking, her steps firm and sure.
She heard frantic calls behind her, but she didn’t listen. She and John had a ranch. These were her cattle as much as his. She wasn’t about to let any thieves come and carry off her precious livestock!
The two Comanches saw her coming and gaped. They didn’t speak. They sat on their horses with their eyes fixed, wide, at the young woman lugging a shotgun toward them.
One of them said something to the other one, who laughed and nodded.
She stopped right in front of them, lifted the shotgun, sighted along it and cocked it.
“This is my ranch,” she said in a firm, stubborn tone. “You aren’t stealing my cattle!”
There was pure admiration in their eyes. They didn’t reach for the rifles lying across their buckskinned laps. They didn’t try to ride her down. They simply watched her.
The younger of the two Indians had long pigtails and a lean, handsome face. His eyes, she noted curiously, were light.
“We have not come to steal cattle,” the young one said in passable English. “We have come to ask Big John for work.”