Pete (The Cowboys)

by Leigh Greenwood

  She wasn’t experienced in love. But she couldn’t believe a man could make her feel that wonderful, so totally re-created, unless he cared deeply. She wasn’t very good with the physical sensations connected with love—they were too new to her—but she was an expert in feelings of the heart. She knew when people disliked her, looked down on her, didn’t think her worth considering.

  Pete cared. No matter what he’d done, she knew he cared.

  And she cared about him. She couldn’t deny that. How could she not care for a man who’d made her feel wanted, valued, safe, beautiful, intelligent—all the things Uncle Carl and the other men she’d known had made it a point to deny. For the first time in her life, she’d felt good about herself. She’d felt confident enough to stand up to Mrs. Dean, to fire Belser, to ride ten miles across the plains to the roundup when she’d never been more than a hundred yards from the ranch house in her life. She’d even felt confident enough to stop apologizing for being part Indian.

  But none of that should count when set against the horrible crimes he’d committed. There was no telling how many men he’d killed before he ran into Peter Warren and realized what an opportunity had fallen into his lap. For all she knew, he could be a notorious killer, wanted all over the West for dozens of horrible crimes. She was lucky he hadn’t killed her. She’d have to escape.

  She got out of bed and checked the door to the cabin. Locked. That didn’t surprise her. She’d expected it. But he couldn’t lock her in all the time. There would be times when he wasn’t watching, when her horse would be ahead or behind his, times when she would need to disappear into the woods to be alone. She just had to be ready to take advantage of the opportunity when it came.

  Yet as she climbed back into her bed and pulled the rough covers over her, a part of her couldn’t admit Pete was a murderer. A part of her brain said no man who’d treated her as he had could be such a vicious criminal.

  What if Pete was telling the truth?

  But that was impossible. There was no point in trying to make him innocent. She just had to think of him as two people. One of those people was a wonderful man who was on the verge of falling in love with her. The other was a vicious killer willing to do anything to get his way. She just had to keep reminding herself that she couldn’t have one without the other.

  Pete had awakened to look out on a ground stiff with frost. Sudden snows could come at any time of the year in the higher elevations. By the time the sun had melted the frost, he’d fed and watered the horses, loaded the packhorse, and saddled the others. He didn’t want to stay here too long. This cabin looked too well used. He was certain someone would think to look here. He wanted to be gone before that happened.

  He woke Anne, but she refused to speak to him, look at him, or eat any of the food he offered. He supposed she would become a little more accommodating when she got hungry, but he didn’t have time to wait. Right now he wanted to get on the horses and leave. The sun had disappeared, the wind had picked up, and the sky had turned a dull blue-gray. It looked like snow.

  “You need to get dressed and packed,” he said when it became clear Anne wasn’t going to eat.

  “Why?”

  “I’m sure Mason or his men will think to check this cabin before long.”

  “Good. I want them to find me. I want them to shoot you.”

  “Well, I don’t, so oblige me by being ready in five minutes.”

  “No.”

  “Do it.”

  “What will you do if I don’t, beat me?”

  He stomped out of the cabin, afraid he’d say something unforgivable. Though why he should worry about that now he couldn’t say. If she really did want Mason to shoot him, he didn’t have an awful lot more to lose. He’d made a mistake in telling her the truth.

  He hadn’t gone ten steps from the cabin before movement on a distant slope caught his attention. Riders. Six of them. He didn’t need binoculars to know they were Mason’s men. He raced back to the cabin.

  “Riders are coming. We’ve got to leave now.”

  “You go if you want. I can’t stop you, but I’m staying here.”

  “Mason wants your ranch. He intends to marry you to get it. If you don’t say yes, he’ll take you to his ranch and keep you there until you do. Once you’re pregnant with his child, you won’t have much choice.”

  He’d expected her to show surprise, shock, even a little fear. He saw none of those—only anger.

  “I’d rather be pregnant with his child than yours.”

  Pete hadn’t thought of the possibility that she might already be carrying his child. It was a slim chance, but the notion nearly unmanned him. He’d never thought of children except as belonging to someone else. Even then he wasn’t too high on them. They were always underfoot, always demanding something, needing something. Their parents couldn’t seem to talk about anything else.

  But the possibility that he and Anne might have created a child together raised the concept of fatherhood to quite a different status. He couldn’t think of giving up his kid. Even less could he accept the idea that his son might be raised by another man. Especially a man like Bill Mason, who would have no interest in seeing that the child of another man lived to grow up.

  “Are you pregnant?” Pete asked.

  “No. I mean, I don’t know. You know it’s impossible to tell this early.”

  He didn’t know. It was something that had never concerned him.

  “Well, I’m not letting Bill Mason get his hands on you until we know for sure.”

  “I told you I’m not leaving here.”

  “I’ll carry you over my shoulder if I have to, but you’re coming with me.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “They’ll be here before long. We’ve got to leave.”

  “No.”

  He didn’t have time to argue. “I’m sorry, but you made me do this.”

  She tried to dodge him when he moved toward her, but there wasn’t enough room in the cabin. He reached out when she tried to dash by, caught her arm, and pulled her to him. She struck out at him with her fists, but he caught her arms and pinned them behind her.

  “We don’t have to do it this way.”

  “You do if you plan to take me out of this cabin.”

  She struggled against him. But after years of back-breaking work in the minefields, he was far too strong for her. He picked her up and carried her outside.

  “You can’t leave all my things inside.”

  “I’ll get them once you’re on your horse.”

  She didn’t say a word when he lifted her into the saddle. But the instant he turned back to the cabin, she jumped off the horse and started to run. He caught her before she’d gone twenty yards.

  “I’m not going,” she said, panting heavily from her exertions.

  “Yes, you are, so you might as well stop fighting.”

  “I’ll just run away again as soon as you turn your back.”

  “Then I guess I’ll have to tie your hands behind you.”

  “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “I’m trying to save my neck. Whether you believe it or not, I’m trying to save yours as well. I’ll do anything I have to.”

  She fought like a little tiger, but he had her hands tied behind her back in a trice. “Now if you try to jump off your horse, you’ll fall.”

  “Help!”

  The scream caught him by surprise. The mountainside threw it back at him.

  “Stop, you little fool. They’ll hear you.”

  “That’s what I want.” She screamed again.

  Pete clamped his hand over her mouth. He studied the group of riders nervously. They showed no signs they’d heard her cry for help, but they’d soon be close enough to hear.

  “Don’t do that again.”

  She stared defiantly at him.

  “I’m going to uncover your mouth. If you—”

  She screamed before he had fully removed his hand. He could tell from the look in her eyes tha
t she was going to scream every chance she got.

  “I’m sorry to do this, but you give me no choice.” He pulled his handkerchief from around his neck and gagged her.

  She looked shocked. More than that, she looked absolutely furious.

  “I hate to do this, but I can’t trust you not to scream again.”

  She fought him hard, but with her hands tied behind her back, there wasn’t much she could do.

  He lifted her into the saddle. “In case you are stubborn enough to throw yourself from your horse again, I’m going to tie your feet below the saddle. No point kicking,” he said when she did her best to kick him in the head. “I’m ten times as strong as you. You might as well give in and wait for a better chance to escape.”

  Apparently she agreed, for she stopped struggling the moment he tied her feet. “I have to collect the rest of our things. I don’t want to leave any signs we’ve been here.” Just in case she decided to spur her horse in an effort to run away while he was inside, he tethered the horse to the rail. She rewarded him with an evil glare.

  It took precious minutes to collect Anne’s belongings and return the cabin to its previous look of neglect. Once outside, he did his best to erase the hoof-prints the horses had left around the cabin. A line rider could account for a few tracks but not all that their three horses had created since yesterday.

  “I don’t know where we’re going,” he said to Anne when he mounted up. “If we get lucky, we might find another line cabin. If not, Ray says there are caves up in those mountains. They might have to do.”

  Anne didn’t show any response, but then he couldn’t expect much with her hands and feet tied and a gag in her mouth. He didn’t know how she would react to hiding in a cave. He wouldn’t like it much, but he’d lived in worse conditions at more than one mining camp. All he asked was that water didn’t drip from the ceiling.

  The first snowflakes started to fall as they rode away from the cabin. Finally, a piece of good luck. The snow would cover the hoofprints. With luck, Mason’s men would decide they’d never been here and stop searching this part of the ranch. Pete didn’t know how much they knew about these hills. The land belonged to the Tumbling T, but he figured Mason already considered it his own.

  Pete pushed hard to reach the place where the trees grew thick enough on the low hills to provide cover. The last time he saw Mason’s men, they were still a mile from the cabin, but he didn’t slow his pace. There were only a few places where he could find cover before he reached the more dense forest of the mountain itself.

  He dropped down into the canyon created by Crazy Woman Creek as it came out of the mountains. Following an ancient buffalo trail alongside the creek made travel much easier. Cottonwood, willow, ash, box elder, water birch, and mountain alder provided a band of cover about fifty feet on either side of the creek through a canyon covered mostly with sage, greasewood, rabbit brush, and sumac. Further up, juniper, maple, aspen and ponderosa pine provided a dense cover Pete hoped would hide him until he could find a cave, a temporary refuge until he figured out how to get them safely to Big Bend.

  The temperature dropped significantly as they climbed higher and higher into the Big Horn Mountains. He wanted to be certain Anne was warm, but she refused to respond when he spoke. He also wanted to get as far away from the cabin as possible before stopping.

  All through the morning the snowfall continued heavy enough to cover the ground but not heavy enough to make travel difficult. Except for the cold. The temperature continued to drop.

  At midday, Pete pulled his horse to a stop. “I’m stopping here to fix something to eat.”

  She grunted when he untied her feet and lifted her from the saddle. He was certain her muscles hurt from the unaccustomed position of riding astride, but there was nothing he could do about that now. He built a small fire, heated the beef he’d fixed for breakfast, and took it over to Anne.

  “If I untie you, can I trust you not to run away?”

  Anne shook her head.

  “I have to take your gag out to feed you.”

  She still looked mutinous.

  “It would be dangerous to try to escape,” he said. “You’d get lost. Besides, you couldn’t make it back to the cabin on foot. You’d probably die of exposure if you had to spend the night outside.”

  She didn’t say a word. He didn’t know if she believed him or thought he was just trying to scare her. He couldn’t take the chance. He removed the gag, but she refused to open her mouth.

  “You might as well eat. I know you’re hungry.”

  She just glared at him.

  “We can’t stop again until evening. You need something in your stomach to keep you warm.”

  Still no response.

  “If you’re carrying a baby, you’ve got to eat. You can hate me, but you can’t hate your baby.”

  “I refuse to be carrying your baby,” she said.

  He grinned. “You probably aren’t. But if you are, I especially don’t want you to fall into Bill Mason’s hands. I don’t think he’d be very good to it.”

  “From the experience I’ve had with men so far, I’d prefer to remain unmarried.”

  Pete held out a spoonful of beef, and she finally opened her mouth to accept it.

  “You might not have much choice,” he said while she chewed. “Until we get confirmation that you married Peter, you don’t have any money or a home. Your uncle can do what he wants with you. Your other choice is to marry Mason and hope he meant it when he said he’d protect you.”

  “I don’t need anybody to protect me.”

  He stopped her talking by putting more food into her mouth.

  “Mason doesn’t mean to give up the Tumbling T. If you’re Peter’s widow and his heir, marrying you would make his seizure legal.”

  “I told you I won’t marry Mason.”

  He put more food in her mouth.

  “Once his hold on the ranch is secure, I don’t trust Mason not to do something to get rid of you.”

  “You shouldn’t judge everybody by yourself,” she said.

  “If I did, I’d never have figured out what Mason did. I spent twelve years working in the goldfields with murder and theft rampant all around me, yet I never killed anybody for anything. I worked for my money.”

  “Where is that money? I’ve never seen it. I might think you were telling the truth if you could show it to me.”

  “I told you, it was stolen.”

  “Like all the other evidence to support your claim,” she said. “Whoever heard of robbers taking a man’s clothes and leaving him naked?”

  “Nobody. They ought to be hanged. Do you know what would have happened if anybody had come by? I’d have had to hide. I couldn’t let them know I was naked. A man could die from something as embarrassing as that.”

  “Just like a man to let his pride kill him.”

  “It’s what you’re trying to do. You’re so damned mad that you stood up for me against everybody, you’re willing to throw yourself into the hands of the first man who comes along, even though I’ve talked myself silly trying to show you that you’re in more danger with him than me.”

  “He hasn’t killed anybody.”

  “Neither have I. Now eat the rest of this beef. We’ve got to be on our way. I want to get to those hills. I’m hoping I can find a cave to give us shelter and concealment. I have a feeling we’re going to need both.” He helped Anne to her feet. “I’d like to untie you. Can I trust you not to try to escape?”

  He saw her glance at the snow that had already begun to filter down through the covering of trees. She obviously figured this wasn’t the time to escape. She nodded.

  “Good. I don’t like seeing you so miserable.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have killed Peter.”

  “When will you get it through your head that I’m not after this ranch? Even if I had decided to take it, the trouble started long before I got here. I think it started when your Uncle Carl got hurt and he appeared
vulnerable for the first time. Eddie couldn’t hold this place. He might be a good foreman, but he doesn’t have the guts to stand up to men like Mason. I think Belser would have killed for it, but he wasn’t smart. He let himself be suckered, and it got him killed.”

  “You know I don’t believe a word you’re saying.”

  “Yeah, I know. But when I figure out how to get you to Big Bend without getting myself killed, I’m getting out of here so fast, you won’t see anything but dust. You’ll have to make your own decisions. I’m hoping I can at least make you question everything Mason says before you stick your head too far into his noose.”

  “I’m not falling into anybody’s noose,” Anne insisted.

  Pete ignored her interruption. “Quite frankly, I don’t think you’ll ever get your ranch back, not unless you have proof of your marriage to Peter and a very good lawyer. Even then I think Mason would fight you for it. He’d probably try to convince the other ranchers you couldn’t hold the ranch on your own, that it needs to be controlled by a man to protect all of them from rustling. And he’d be right.”

  “I’d hire a foreman.”

  “You’ll have a hard time finding a cowman out here who’ll work for a woman. That gives Mason all the excuse he needs to kidnap you and keep you on his ranch until you agree to marry him. The women wouldn’t like it, but the other ranchers probably wouldn’t say anything. Once you were married—and that could be arranged even without your consent—there wouldn’t be anything anybody could do.”

  For once she didn’t fling a hot-tempered response back at him. Good. Maybe she was beginning to think. If he could keep this up for a few days, maybe she’d have a chance. “Enough talk. We’d better be going.”

  Traveling became harder as they climbed higher into the mountains. The leafy cottonwoods gave way to scattered water birch and patches of currants, raspberry, and chokeberry. The bitterly cold wind drove the snow directly into their faces. Pete stopped twice to make certain Anne’s hands and face were covered.

  They climbed steadily toward the belt of lodgepole pines still a couple of thousand feet above them. Before long they came to a place where ancient rivers had cut a canyon through rock that rose nearly perpendicular around him. This was the best place to look for caves hollowed out millions of years ago. Leaving the comparative shelter of the streambed, they rode out into the open and started up the steep mountainside.