Peaches frowned. "They also had a warm spring just north of the place. There's a multitude of springs in this area."
"We thought about throwing you in," Fox said, smiling.
The relief accompanying their light laughter told Tanner what an ordeal the last few days had been for all of them. Especially Fox.
He drank in her face. Even with the sunset bathing her skin, she looked tired and there were new creases between her eyes which appeared dark gray tonight. To him, she was beautiful.
"You saved my life."
His comment made her uncomfortable and she dealt with it by appearing annoyed. By now he knew her well enough to know compliments hadn't come often enough that she knew how to accept them. Realizing this caused his chest to tighten with an emotion he couldn't put a name to.
"You had a fever for several days. You can thank Peaches for seeing you through."
"Thank you." He spoke to Peaches but he didn't take his eyes off Fox. Tonight was chilly and she wore her poncho and sat close to the fire. He knew what marvels lay beneath that poncho. Knew of the softness she seldom showed the world. There had been a moment, gazing into her eyes before he lost consciousness, that he'd seen the tenderness in her eyes and he'd wondered if he would ever see her again. Thinking he might not had devastated him.
"Are you strong enough for a short walk?" she asked, studying his face. Tanner suspected he didn't look too sprightly himself.
"Yes." In truth he felt exhausted but nothing could have made him admit it. Once away from the fire, he pressed her arm to his side and asked, "How many days?"
"It's been almost a week." She glanced at his sling. "How does the arm feel?"
"Sore."
"You lost a lot of blood. And you had a fever that scared all of us."
Bits of memory came back to him. "You led my horse."
"We took turns, shifting between the mules and you."
She turned him so deftly that he hardly noticed until he saw the campfire ahead and realized she'd turned him around. "Did anything happen that I should know?"
Fox ducked her head and he suspected she was frowning. "All in all everything went smoothly."
"But?"
"There are small settlements in the area we've been passing through. Mostly Mormon settlements but a few have saloons. Jubal Brown had an incident in one of those."
Tanner stopped and forced her to face him. "Go on."
Fox shrugged beneath the hand he'd placed on her shoulder. "He got drunk and apparently instigated a fight over a woman in the saloon. To put it politely, we were asked to leave at once."
"I'll speak to him," Tanner replied, his gaze fixing on the men at the fire.
"He's already been spoken to," Fox said in a tight voice.
Her tone said it all. Tanner nodded. "And Peaches?"
"I think he's a little better."
Her tone also spoke to this issue and Tanner understood her answer was more wishful thinking than truth, which didn't surprise him. Peaches was slumped with fatigue and his dark eyes were dull.
Fox laced her fingers through his and gazed up at him with softness in her eyes. "I missed you."
"If an unconscious man can miss someone, then I missed you, too," he said with a smile. More than anything right now, he wanted to kiss her. Wanted to sink down to the spring grass and hold her in his arms and sleep without the feverish dreams. He wanted to tell her how amazing she was, tell her that he'd never met a woman like her. Wanted her to know that her courage astonished him.
Later, as he lay in his bedroll gazing up at the spangled sky, he thought about everything he owed his father. His upbringing, his education, a privileged life, his livelihood. For as long as he could remember, he had made decisions to please a man whose only flaw was that he couldn't be pleased. Whatever Tanner did, it wasn't good enough. How long did a son keep trying? How long until the debt was paid? Could he ever make a choice without first considering the effect on his father? Without wanting his father to finally offer approval?
No matter how he turned the question in his mind, the answer came up the same. His father would never accept a woman like Fox. And in truth, he doubted Fox held any interest in the world Tanner lived in. He couldn't picture her paying or receiving calls, or standing by while a household staff tended her home, nor could he imagine her rigged out in a ballroom gown.
The San Rafael Swell was impassable. It rose like a great barrier of towers, buttes, and chasms. In places the sheer red cliffs soared to two thousand feet. An inexperienced guide could waste weeks attempting to find a passage, but Fox had faced this obstacle before. Still, it pleased her that she led them directly to the hogback and the narrow opening that dropped them down into a long valley. Here the terrain leveled out and she pushed the company hard, riding long days to make up time.
Temperatures soared and in places the ground was barren. In the last couple of days the men had turned silent and surly. Finally spotting the trees that signaled the presence of the Green River was like finding an oasis in the desert.
"Lord, I am ready for some fricking shade," Hanratty said, swinging down from his horse and wiping sweat from his forehead. He led his horse to the river and knelt on the bank, splashing water on his dusty face.
"You sit under a tree and catch your breath," Fox ordered Peaches. In the midst of a coughing spell, he cast her a grateful glance, then doubled over again.
She watched him a moment, feeling her heart seize, then pressed her lips hard together and began pulling the packs off the mules. After a minute she noticed that Jubal Brown worked beside her.
"He's bad off, ain't he?" Jubal asked, jerking his head toward Peaches.
"He's been better," Fox said, separating the packs into those with provisions they needed to make camp and those with items they wouldn't require tonight.
"He needs a doctor and a month of bed rest at least."
"Well, I'll just take him to the hotel then. Get him a fine room and some pretty nurses."
"Don't go getting pissy with me. I didn't make him sick."
Fox walked away, going to the river's edge. She could tell herself twenty times a day that Peaches was improving, but that didn't make it true. A dozen times she'd asked herself if she shouldn't have insisted that he stay in No Name. It didn't help to know that Peaches would have ignored her.
Tanner walked up behind her and placed his hands on her shoulders. "There's a lady doctor traveling with the group camped up by the willows. Maybe she should take a look at Mr. Hernandez."
Fox glanced toward the other groups waiting to ford the Green River. "I'll speak to him but I can almost guarantee that he won't agree. Most likely the lady doctor would just tell him to stay in bed a month." Spreading her hands, she indicated the steep canyon walls to the north and south. "This is the only flat space for miles. I don't know why there isn't a settlement here with a place for a man to rest, but there isn't." They stood in silence, gazing at the campfires up and down the riverbanks. "He won't do it, Tanner. He's going to Denver with me and that's that. But five minutes after we reach Denver, I'll have his butt in a real bed and a real doctor on the way to see him." Her mouth turned grim. "I don't know what else to do."
After supper she asked Peaches if he felt up to a game of chess. For the first time that she could remember, he shook his head no.
"It's been a long day, Missy," he said, squeezing her hand. "We'll have a game tomorrow. If crossing the river goes well."
"It should. We'll pay the ferry to take you and the packs across. Then me and the men will swim the horses and mules."
"Tanner's not wearing the sling anymore, and he's eating again. Glad to see it."
"I'd like to see you eating more."
"You eat enough for the two of us, Missy. Always have."
They smiled at each other then Fox made him promise again to have a chess game tomorrow before she wandered off in search of Tanner. She found him kneeling on one of the gravel bars, turning a piece of rock between his finger
s.
"It's petrified wood," he explained when she asked. "And there are fossils scattered all over this area."
Fox knelt beside him and examined the petrified wood. "Hanratty was talking to one of the other groups that have been here a couple of days. He says they've found a lot of jasper and agates in these gravel bars."
"Doesn't surprise me."
"I've seen fossils before. What makes them?"
Tanner warmed to the subject and was still telling her about dinosaurs when the sun slipped behind the peaks.
"You know a lot of interesting things," Fox commented as they walked back to their fire, brushing up against each other seemingly by accident.
"So do you. We just know different interesting things." Stopping, he pulled her behind a tree and kissed her deeply, then wrapped his arms around her. "I wish there weren't so many people around."
"Me too," Fox said, her voice smothered against his neck. Lord, he smelled good.
She longed for him, burned for him. She even dreamed about him. Sometimes, when the trail ahead was obvious, she would drop back and ride behind him so she could look at the wide slope of his shoulders and the way he sat his horse. His dark hair was long again, dropping below his collar, and she liked that. Loved watching his strong thighs grip the sides of the bay. And every time he favored his sore arm, she noticed that she touched her shot-up earlobe, a discovery that made her smile.
Lifting her mouth, she tasted deep of him and shivered when his arms tightened around her and she felt the heat and hardness of his desire for her.
It would be so easy to love this man.
The thought shocked her and kept her awake long after the campfires along the river had been extinguished and the only sounds were the night music of crickets and the rustle of small animals moving through the underbrush.
In her entire life Fox had loved only two people. Her mother and Peaches. She had never imagined there could be another.
And yet, when she gazed at the craggy angles of Tanner's strong face or looked at his hands or remembered the heat of tangled bodies, her chest tightened and she couldn't breathe right. An ache closed her throat.
She suspected that was what love was, a knot behind a person's ribs that could expand with wild miraculous joy and then clamp down into a ball so heavy it hurt to carry.
Lying there in the dark, feeling the weight behind her ribs, she reaffirmed her vow to take revenge on Hobbs Jennings and kill the bastard. Since she could have no future with Tanner, it didn't matter that she had no future at all. It would be better to cut her life short than to spend it hurting inside, wanting what she could never have.
* * *
CHAPTER 16
A warm steady rain followed them south as they left behind the book cliffs Fox had been tracking. Last night they had given up on a fire and had gone without coffee. They'd eaten cold food while rain dripped off their hat brims. Cakes of mud clung to their boots and had to be carved off with a knife before they crawled into their tents.
It was still drizzling when they woke. Mornings were never Fox's best time of day, and mornings without coffee made her snarly. She led out without speaking to anyone and stayed well ahead until Hanratty rode up beside her.
"What do you want?"
"Coffee, a couple thousand dollars, and a willing woman."
Fox flipped her wet braid over her shoulder and didn't bother turning her head. "There's a hope for one of those things if the fricking rain ever stops." Grimacing, she gave herself a mental kick. Since talking to Barbara Robb, she was trying not to swear. Trying not to stride.
"I was talking to some people back at Green River," Hanratty said. "One group is going to Denver, too, but they're heading straight east."
"Which will be a ride as easy as ours until they reach the Grand River, which is impassable on the route they've chosen and it's going to look even worse because it's flooding now." She was in no mood to justify herself and resented his implication.
"How do you know it's flooding?"
"Because it's spring." She refrained from adding "you idiot." Collecting a smidgeon of patience, she added, "The Grand drains the Colorado mountains. It runs high longer during the spring melt than other rivers."
"I want to tell you something," Hanratty said. Then he fell silent for so long that Fox finally sighed and glanced at him. He rode hunched against the rain, his gaze straight ahead.
"Well?"
"If I'd known you were looking for a man I might have thrown my hat in the ring."
Fox's shoulders jerked back and she stared. "I wasn't looking for a man." Anger heated her cheeks. "Tanner and me it just happened."
"Did it happen because he's got a rich daddy?"
"The gold doesn't have anything to do with anything! I've told you before, this is none of your damned business."
"If you're staying in Denver because of him, you're in for a fall." Now he straightened in his saddle but he still didn't look at her. "I'm asking you to go back to Carson City with me."
Fox's mouth fell open. After a minute she dashed rain from her eyes and looked away, frowning. "For the last time, I'm not going back to Carson City. I have business in Denver. And before you ask, it's none of your concern."
"I could wait in Denver until you finish your business."
He was making this difficult and embarrassing them both. "I don't have a hankering in your direction." Blunt was best in situations like this. "Furthermore, just so there's no misunderstanding, it's not you in particular," she said, although it was mostly him in particular, "there's not going to be another man for me."
"You're turning me down."
"Yes."
He nodded shortly, scattering raindrops. "Then it's on your head. When things go wrong, remember that you could have prevented it." Jerking savagely at the reins, he turned his horse and rode down the line of mules.
Twisting in the saddle, Fox looked back, pissed that he'd approached her in that way and also because once again he'd taken it on himself to offer advice she didn't need or want. She was still irritated when they stopped for the night and she stared across the fire at Hanratty, who stared back at her.
Peaches held his hands to the flames and sighed. "The heat feels good." He tilted his head to check the clouds. "I think it's going to rain again before we have a chance to dry out."
"Count your blessings, old man." Jubal cupped his hands around his coffee cup. "It ain't raining now."
"Well, Missy, I've been putting you off for several nights. Tonight I think I have the energy to beat you in one game."
"How about we put it off for one more night?" She ran an eye over his wet clothing and weary expression. The sooner he crawled into his tent and donned dry duds and got some early sleep, the better. "I'm not in the mood to get whipped at chess." It broke her heart that he looked relieved and didn't argue.
"Are you in a mood to take a walk?" Tanner asked, standing and stretching his neck against his hand.
With a final glance at Hanratty, she stood and walked out on the short wet grass, stopping near the horses.
"What's going on between you and Hanratty?" Tanner asked, coming up beside her.
"Nothing important."
She'd had a few hours to consider their conversation and what puzzled her most was the timing. Why would Hanratty choose to ask her to take up with him now instead of waiting until they were a day or two out of Denver? To Fox's way of thinking, that would have made more sense, to approach her when the liaison with Tanner was ending. Hanratty had to realize that she was committed for the duration of this trip.
"I had a horse this color when I was a boy." Tanner stroked his hand down his big bay's neck. "His name was Cannonball. Do you remember your first horse?"
"Oh yes." She glanced at his mouth, swallowed hard, and ran a hand down the bay's flank. Lord, she loved kissing this man. "On my first trip east, I lived with Some Paiutes for a few months. When I left, they gave me a mustang. I've favored mustangs ever since."
"That's right. You said you'd spent some time with the Indians." Tanner studied her with interest. "Did they capture you?"
Fox laughed. "No. I just wandered into their camp one day, cold and hungry. They were so astonished to find a woman traveling in the wilderness alone that they invited me to stay a while. I think they thought I had magic powers or something."
"I'm astonished, too," Tanner said, meaning it. "You really crossed the wilderness by yourself?"
"I was seventeen. Too young to know that women didn't do that sort of thing."
"Seriously, why did you?" Hands clasped, they walked away from the horses.
"I'd just learned that my stepfather had stolen my life." She drew a long breath and held it a moment. "I decided I'd go to Denver and kill the bastard."
Tanner stopped and peered at her face. "Good Lord. Did you kill him?" he asked softly.
She shook her head. "I found him all right. He lived in a big mansion on a hilly street. When I got there, the place was lit up like daylight and surrounded by fancy carriages. I stood in the trees about an hour watching people going in and out, dressed like kings and queens. And I felt about this big." She held her thumb and forefinger an inch apart. "I realized I'd wasted almost a year getting there because I'd never get close enough to him to kill him. I don't know," she said, rubbing her eyes. "Maybe I could have. But I turned cowardly. He seemed so big and important, and I was I don't know. But I turned around and went to Carson City where I hooked up with Peaches again." She shrugged. "Folks made a fuss about a woman making the wilderness trip twice by herself, but it didn't seem that special at the time."
Tanner took her into his arms and held her. "I'm sorry, Fox. I wish things had been different for you."
"You know what I wish I'd been able to do?" She leaned back and looked up at him. "I wish I'd seen Paris, France. If my stepfather hadn't stolen my inheritance, I would have taken a trip to Paris. Would you tell me about it? Is it really the city of lights like they say in the books?"
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