Autumn Lover (32 page)

Restlessly Hunter went upstairs. He paced through the first floor of the ranch house. Everything was in order. It was the same on the second floor. Sonny was watching out one side of the house, Case the other. Neither man had seen anything but sunlight and a slow gathering of clouds as the afternoon wore on.

The door to Elyssa’s bedroom was shut. Hunter stood there, listening intently.

Small, ragged sounds came from inside the room.

Softly Hunter tried the door, wondering if Elyssa had bolted it from inside.

The door opened without any restraint.

Hunter told himself he would only look in and check that Elyssa was all right.

She was turning restlessly on the bed. A bar of light from a rifle slit fell across her face. Tears shone on her cheeks.

Though Elyssa seemed to be asleep, she was crying.

In one stride Hunter was through the doorway. The door clicked shut behind him. The bolt slipped into place without a sound. Making no noise, he went to stand by the bed.

A quick look told Hunter that Elyssa wasn’t awake. She didn’t even know she was crying. Whimpering softly, she was held within the uneasy coils of nightmare.

A loaded pistol lay on the bedside table. Hunter knew without being told that it was Elyssa’s way to insure that she didn’t fall into Ab Culpepper’s hands alive.

Why didn’t you come to me for comfort?
Hunter asked silently.

The answer came with cruel finality.

We’re just lovers.

Just lovers.

Swiftly, recklessly, no longer caring what the men might think of Elyssa or of him, Hunter stripped off his boots and got into bed with her. As he slid beneath the bedcovers, the scent of gun smoke and rosemary and a woman’s warmth lifted to his nostrils.

Desire and something else spread through Hunter’s body, something very much like grief. He didn’t understand the vise of sorrow gripping him, but he had no such problem with the passion.

A single glance when Hunter slid into bed had told him Elyssa was fully clothed except for shoes. The buckskin had been traded for a soft flannel shirt that once had been red. Now it was so faded it was barely pink.

Hunter’s hands trembled at the thought of unbuttoning the cloth and finding taut, creamy flesh beneath. He didn’t want to wake Elyssa, yet he needed her in a way he didn’t understand.

With a tenderness that was sorrow and passion combined, Hunter stroked Elyssa’s pale, tangled hair. More asleep than awake, she turned toward him and murmured his name.

“Don’t wake up,” Hunter whispered, drawing Elyssa into his arms. “I just want to hold you while you sleep.”

It was a lie. Hunter wanted much more. If all he could be to Elyssa was her lover, then he wanted to be that one last time; for after tonight, there would be no more time for him.

Sighing, Elyssa burrowed into Hunter’s arms. His body leaped at the feel of the womanly warmth resting against him. Fierce arousal stretched him on a rack of need. He closed his eyes and bit back a groan, not wanting to awaken her.

When Hunter finally could breathe around the savage ache in his groin, he opened his eyes. Elyssa was watching him. The passion and grief in her eyes matched his.

“Don’t worry, honey,” Hunter said softly. “Ab Culpepper will be dead before the sun comes up. Tomorrow night you won’t have to fall asleep with a loaded pistol beside your bed again, wondering if you’ll have to kill…someone.”

A shudder worked through Elyssa’s body. Saying nothing, she wrapped her arms around Hunter and held him.

The baffling grief moved through Hunter again, both easing and increasing his hunger. He kissed her hair very gently.

“It will be all right,” Hunter whispered. “Case and I are going out at dark.”

“
No.
”

The hoarse whisper was torn from Elyssa’s throat.

Hunter didn’t try to argue with her. He knew what was necessary. When she thought about it, she would too.

“It’s the only way,” Hunter said. “If we’re lucky, we’ll get Ab and his kin.”

“No!”

“Even if we can’t get to Ab, he doesn’t have any hold over his raiders but greed. If some of them start turning up with their throats slit in the morning, the rest might well bolt.”

“You’ll be killed.”

Again, Hunter didn’t argue.

If he had thought sneaking past Ab’s guards would be easy, he would have taken the women and run for the safety of Camp Halleck days ago.

But sneaking through the raiders would take every bit of skill he and Case had, and the devil’s own luck in the bargain.

If the situation hadn’t been desperate, Hunter wouldn’t even have considered it.

Hunter bent his head slightly to kiss Elyssa. He meant
the kiss to be gentle, to soothe her fears and his own, but the first touch of her lips went through him like torch fire through straw.

With a hoarse sound Hunter caught Elyssa’s mouth beneath his and twisted hard, opening her for the kiss. His tongue shot into her mouth with an urgency that was little short of desperation.

The fierce kiss arched Elyssa’s neck over Hunter’s forearm and forced her head back into the pillows. She didn’t even notice. Her fingers were clenched in his hair and she was straining to get closer to him with every bit of her strength.

Hunter’s blood caught fire at Elyssa’s headlong answer to his need. Even as he deepened the kiss, he began undressing her with quick, impatient motions of his hands.

She fought to help him. Together they stripped off her trousers and kicked them aside.

“I didn’t mean to—” Hunter began.

Elyssa took his mouth again, desperate to be close to him in the only way she could. She pulled one of his hands to the aching heat between her thighs.

Hunter forgot what he had been trying to say. Elyssa was hot, soft, and she wept for him at his first touch. The liquid fire of her burned away every thought of control. He jerked open his pants and rolled over onto her, wild to be inside her.

A quick thrust of his hips buried Hunter in Elyssa’s heat. She jerked and a keening cry broke from her throat. Shuddering with stark pleasure, Hunter pulled back, trying to spare her.

Instantly Elyssa wrapped her legs around Hunter’s thighs and pushed upward with her hips, forcing him even deeper into her.

The proof that she wanted him as desperately as he wanted her took all restraint from Hunter. He drove into
her repeatedly, powerfully, as though he must experience all of her or die in his next heartbeat.

Elyssa arched up to Hunter, meeting his driving need with her own fierce demands. He gave her everything she asked for, and more. Without warning ecstasy poured through her in a cataract of fire, transfixing her.

The feel of Elyssa’s shivering climax hurled Hunter over the edge. Just enough sanity remained for him to take her mouth in a deep kiss, muffling the sounds that came from both of them as he spent himself deeply within her.

They fell asleep that way, interlocked, knowing only each other and the ecstasy that still shuddered through them.

An hour later Hunter and Elyssa were awakened by Case’s knock on her bedroom door.

The Ladder S was under attack again.

E
lyssa stood near the rifle slit, peering out into the slanting light of late afternoon with eyes that burned. Hunter stood just behind her, his body curving over hers almost protectively. He looked past her pale hair to the shimmering golden light and blackened ground that lay beyond the rifle slit.

Involuntarily, Hunter took a deep breath. He was close enough to Elyssa to smell the mingled scents of rosemary and gun smoke. The vital warmth of her body reached up to him.

Just lovers
.

“I don’t see anything,” Elyssa said, sighing.

She straightened, only to find herself held between the shutter and the coiled power of Hunter’s body. Sensations cascaded through her, a glittering network of heat coupled with a yearning that had nothing to do with desire.

“Do you—see anything?” she asked huskily.

To Hunter the catch in Elyssa’s voice was like a caress. It took him a moment to answer, for he didn’t trust his own voice not to reveal his elemental response to her.

“I guess,” Hunter said carefully, “they were just making sure we didn’t get any rest. But unless Case and
I stop them, the raiders will come at us again with torches in the hours before dawn.”

Fear tightened Elyssa’s body at the thought of Hunter out beyond the walls, feeling around bare-handed in the dark for rattlesnakes.

And finding them.

“Don’t go,” she said in a low voice.

Hunter’s only answer was Elyssa’s name breathed into her hair.

“I’d rather die with you,” she whispered. “Please, Hunter. Don’t go.”

“It’s our only chance. And…” Hunter touched Elyssa’s hair with his lips. “I can’t let my brother go against Ab Culpepper alone.”

Elyssa closed her eyes for an instant.

What did I expect
? she asked herself ruthlessly.
Hunter loves his brother
.

In bleak silence Elyssa opened her eyes and watched the burned land for signs of the raiders.

“Elyssa?” Hunter whispered, bothered by her unnatural stillness.

“No one.”

“What?”

“No one is coming.”

“That’s not what I—”

Whatever Hunter had meant to say was lost in simultaneous cries from Morgan and Case, who had the upstairs watch.

“Gunfire! North and east!”

“West and south sides, look alert!”

“Get ready, men,” Hunter called. “Don’t shoot unless you’re sure of your target. We’re damned low on ammunition.”

Elyssa bent to pick up her carbine.

Hunter turned and headed for the stairs at a run, rifle in hand. The sound of rifle fire came from all directions,
telling him that the attack wasn’t merely a feint to keep them stirred up. But there was something odd about the shooting.

By the time Hunter raced upstairs, he figured out what was bothering him. The shots weren’t coming any closer.

Nor was anyone in the house shooting back.

“Well?” Hunter demanded as he strode into the nursery.

“I can hear them, but I can’t see them,” Case said.

“Morgan,” Hunter called. “What do you see?”

“Nothing.”

Yet the gunfire came without pause.

“Army?” Case asked skeptically.

“No bugles,” Hunter said.

“Maybe the raiders are fighting each other.”

Hunter’s grin was as savage as his crack of laughter.

Then there was only tense silence as men waited and listened and watched. They saw nothing but the burned land and the rich light of late afternoon.

Slowly a chilling sound swelled and drifted down to the ranch on the wind. Hunter and Case turned and looked at one another.

“Sounds like war cries,” Hunter said.

“When the cat’s away making maps and drinking whiskey, those mice sure do take advantage,” Case said dryly.

“Maybe they’ll kill each other off.”

Saying nothing, Case raised his rifle, sighted down the barrel, and waited to see whether it was Indians or raiders who would come at the Ladder S next.

“Holler if you spot anything,” Hunter said.

He turned and went through the house like a dark wraith, looking out every rifle slit, listening, waiting. Rifle fire and war cries came to him from all directions.

Hunter went back to Elyssa. Like Case, she was look-
ing down the barrel of her gun, waiting to see which enemy survived. Unlike Case, she had propped the barrel on the bottom of the rifle slit, taking the gun’s weight from her arms. Light from the slit made her eyes glow like blue-green gems.

Saying nothing, Hunter went to stand behind Elyssa. He put his hands against the shutter, leaned forward, and looked out over Elyssa’s head.

After a few moments the lines of their bodies merged into one.

Without looking away from the land, Hunter breathed a kiss against Elyssa’s hair. It was so light, so brief, that she wasn’t certain it had happened at all.

“Indians heading for the cottonwoods,” Case called from upstairs.

Hunter turned his head away from Elyssa.

“Hold your fire!” he yelled. “If they want to kill Culpeppers, I won’t stop them.”

Sporadic fire came from the cottonwoods, then shrill war cries followed by a silence that slowly expanded to fill the afternoon.

“Look alive, boys,” Hunter called. “They could come at any moment.”

Tautly Elyssa waited and watched the afternoon deepen into early evening.

Nothing stirred, not even the birds that usually flocked to the marsh for the night.

Just when Elyssa was certain that the Indians had gone away and left the Ladder S untouched, Case cried out again.

“Indians. Five of them.” Then, in disbelief, “One is carrying a parley flag!”

“Hold your fire!” Hunter called.

Hardly able to believe what he was seeing, Hunter watched as four Indians stopped at the edge of the cot-
tonwoods. The man with the parley flag rode on into the ranch yard.

“Ute,” Elyssa said. “Painted for war, not truce.”

Hunter went to the front door, where Morgan waited.

Elyssa was right behind him.

“Go back,” Hunter said. “It could be a trap.”

“No. If you go, I go.”

“Morgan.”

Hunter said no more.

When the front door opened, Elyssa stayed inside for the simple reason that Morgan was holding her with wiry ease. She fought for a moment in bitter silence, then gave in with a weariness that tugged at Hunter’s heart.

The front door shut behind Hunter, leaving him alone in a place of burned grass and churned dirt. There was no rifle in his hands, but there was a six-gun in his belt.

The warriors who waited at the cottonwoods were lean and hard and fit. Their ponies were the same. But it was the Ute with the ragged truce flag who had Hunter’s attention.

Quick, flowing motions of the man’s hands told Hunter what he hadn’t dared to believe—the Utes had no desire to make war with the Ladder S. They had come to pay off a debt.

To Elyssa.

And only to her.

“Elyssa,” Hunter called without turning away from the Utes. “Come out here.”

An instant later the door opened and Elyssa came to stand beside Hunter.

The Ute began signing again. His hands were both graceful and powerful as he shaped concepts that were shared by white and native languages alike.

“He says that their headman owes a great debt to you,” Hunter translated for Elyssa.

“But—”

“Wait,” Hunter interrupted.

He watched intently, then began translating.

“His wife and son were taken by white men,” Hunter said. “With the help of one, she managed to escape, only to be run to ground by the others like a rabbit by coyotes. Then a brave woman warrior came on a spotted stallion.”

Startled, Elyssa looked at Hunter, but he was watching the Ute’s hands.

“Though white herself,” Hunter translated, “she shot a white man, took the son into her arms, and gave space on her horse to the wife. The white woman took the wife and son into her own lodge and cared for them as tenderly as a mother with her own babe.”

The Ute paused and looked at Elyssa for a long moment before he resumed signing.

“He-Who-speaks-First-at-the-Fire thanks the white woman,” Hunter translated. “Let there be peace between our lodges.”

“Yes,” Elyssa said instantly.

The Ute understood. He made a sweeping motion with his arm.

Five more Utes galloped down from the slopes where cedar and piñon grew amid tongues of blackened ground. Three of the Utes led a string of three Appaloosa mares. They were beautiful animals, long-limbed and deep-chested.

“Hunter?” Elyssa whispered.

“Looks like you’ll be raising spotted horses just like you wanted to,” he said quietly.

Stunned, Elyssa gathered the lead ropes that were dropped at her feet as the Indians galloped by.

Then two more Indians came. One was leading the mare that the Indian girl had taken when she fled the ranch. A man was tied face down over the mare’s back.
The second Indian was riding double, holding another man upright in front of him on the pony.

A white man.

“Bill!” Elyssa cried.

The Indian released his burden, letting Bill slide onto the ground. As though that was a signal, the rest of the Utes whirled their ponies and galloped off.

The front door opened. Penny ran out and threw herself to her knees next to Bill.

Elyssa started to go to Bill as well. Then she froze as she saw that the man tied to the Ladder S mare had only one arm.

“
Mac
,” she said, shocked.

If Hunter was shocked, he didn’t show it. He simply pulled his belt knife, cut Mac free, and caught him.

“Is he—” Elyssa began.

“Alive, barely,” Hunter interrupted.

He carried Mac to the house. No sooner was Hunter through the door than he called out to Case.

“Take two men and see which raiders are left alive. If any.”

Just after noon on the following day, Elyssa went silently down the stairs to the cellar. The house felt strangely empty to her. Most of the men were out rounding up cattle that had been held just beyond Ladder S land. At last count, more than six hundred head had been found.

The raiders were buried where they were found. Only one Culpepper had been found among the dead.

It wasn’t Ab.

Case found mule tracks and followed them until they vanished on a slope of broken rock. Then he had returned to tell Hunter and pack his gear.

Elyssa knew that Case wouldn’t be on the Ladder S come sundown.

Nor would Hunter.

I can’t let my brother go against Ab Culpepper alone
.

Only Bill and Mac remained in the dispensary. Bill wasn’t badly injured. He was simply exhausted from being tied up, beaten, and left for dead by the Culpeppers on their way to raid the Ladder S.

Mac’s condition was much worse.

At the bottom of the cellar stairway, Elyssa stopped and let her eyes adjust to the dim light. The flickering lantern revealed little. Mac’s cot was on one side. Bill’s cot was on the other, in a corner where the lantern light barely reached.

Penny was nowhere in sight.

Just before Elyssa turned to go back upstairs, there was movement from Bill’s side of the room. As her eyes adjusted, Elyssa saw that there were two people on the cot. They were locked in each other’s arms.

Words of passion and tenderness filtered through the darkness, telling Elyssa that Bill finally returned the love Penny had for him. Though Elyssa was happy for both of them, the sight of their love was almost painful to her.

Tomorrow at dawn Morgan, Sonny, and the vaqueros would drive cattle and horses to Camp Halleck, fulfilling the contract.

Hunter and Case would be going in the opposite direction, following Ab Culpepper’s tracks.

I can’t let my brother go against Ab Culpepper alone
.

As Elyssa began to retreat, Bill called out to her in a low voice.

“Come on over here, Sassy. You can be the first to know that Penny has agreed to marry me.”

There was a startled sound from Penny. She scrambled off the cot and stood beside it.

“Congratulations,” Elyssa said.

“On finally getting smart?” Bill retorted.

“It’s so rare in men,” Elyssa said. Then she gave him a bittersweet smile, taking the sting out of her words.

Penny laughed out loud. Even Bill’s eyes twinkled against his windburned face.

“How is Mac doing?” Elyssa asked.

Slowly Penny shook her head.

“I just checked on him,” Penny said. “He drifts in and out, but each time he goes under…”

Penny shrugged and said no more.

In the time since Mac had returned so unexpectedly to the Ladder S, he had done nothing but fall deeper into the thrall of his wound.

“It’s just as well,” Bill said tersely. “Saves me the trouble of killing him.”

“What?” Elyssa said, shocked.

“Mac was stealing you blind,” Hunter said from the stairway behind Elyssa.

She spun around.

“What are you talking about?” she demanded.

Hunter looked at Bill.

“You tell her,” Bill said, taking Penny’s hand. “I’d rather kiss this little lady.”

Penny’s blush and smile of delight was like a sunrise in the dim room. She bent to receive Bill’s kiss.

Elyssa looked away.

“Mac started stealing from you as soon as John Sutton died,” Hunter said to Elyssa.

She simply shook her head, not understanding.

“Bill told me that Mac didn’t figure a ‘no-account daughter of an adulteress deserved the sweat of John’s brow,’” Hunter explained. “So Mac started setting up his own ranch.”

“With Ladder S stock and a Slash River brand?” Elyssa guessed.

“That’s about the size of it.”

“I suspected,” Bill said a moment later, “but I was too drunk to care.”

Penny made a low sound and touched Bill’s face. He smiled at her gently.

“By the time Penny made me see the foolishness of my ways,” Bill said, “the Culpeppers had started moving in. Mac didn’t like it one bit, but he couldn’t stop it.”

“So he staged his ‘death’ and threw in with the Culpeppers?” Hunter asked.

Bill nodded.

Hunter threw a narrow look in Mac’s direction.