Autumn Lover (4 page)

“That was a fool thing to do,” Hunter said bluntly. “You could have broken your horse’s leg.”

Elyssa didn’t disagree. Even now the thought of that wild ride made cold sweat gather at the base of her spine.

But nothing made her feel as cold as what her fate would have been if she hadn’t outrun Ab Culpepper.

“Damn,” Hunter muttered. “You don’t have the sense that God gave a goose. You never should have been out alone in the first place.”

Hunter walked around Bugle Boy and went to work on the stallion’s other side.

“Someone had to do the count,” Elyssa said.

“What about your cowhands?”

“They left,” she said simply.

“How many do you have now?”

“Oh…three, at last count. Depends on how their Dutch courage is holding out,” Elyssa added wryly.

“Just three? A ranch this size could use four times that many hands.”

“Finally we agree on something,” Elyssa said beneath her breath. “I will treasure the moment.”

Hunter looked at her over Bugle Boy’s back.

“Did you say something?” Hunter asked, his voice bland.

Elyssa cleared her throat and decided that baiting Hunter was tempting, but not very bright.

“I agree that the Ladder S could use more men,” Elyssa said. “In fact, when Mother and Father were alive, we had thirty hands for the busiest times of the year. In the winter we had fewer, of course. It depended
on how many cattle we were holding over.”

Hunter was silent for a moment. Then he pinned Elyssa with night-dark eyes.

“Do you have enough money to hire at least seven more men at gunfighting wages?” he asked bluntly.

Elyssa’s stomach tightened again. Money wouldn’t be a problem if the cattle and horses were delivered to the army on time.

If they weren’t, she would be bankrupt.

“I can pay,” Elyssa said tightly. “But the men will have to work cattle, too.”

Hunter nodded. The brush moved in long strokes over Bugle Boy’s bloodred hide.

“The kind of men I’m looking for won’t mind pushing cows,” Hunter said.

“There is a problem.”

“Just one?”

“Until this one is solved, the rest can’t be,” Elyssa retorted.

“I’m listening.”

“Another moment to treasure,” she muttered.

Hunter’s head came up.

Elyssa started talking. Fast.

“The Culpeppers are scaring away the men who would normally look for work here,” she said.

“So I’ve heard.”

“Even the Turner clan off to the south is staying away, and Turners have worked autumn and spring roundups on the Ladder S for years.”

Hunter nodded.

“That doesn’t worry you?” she asked tartly.

He shrugged.

“But how will the men get through the Culpepper gang to be hired by the Ladder S?” Elyssa demanded.

“Same way I did. By using their heads. Or in a group, using their guns. Either way, they’ll come.”

“You sound very certain.”

“Cash jobs are hard to come by out here. A man can make more money in a month at fighting wages than he can in a season of pushing cows.”

Elyssa sighed and rubbed her arms, feeling the night chill through the heavy silk shawl. She wished she had the shawl’s cost in plain old homespun wool.

But she didn’t. There was no money for more suitable clothes for her or paint for the house or for anything else that wasn’t essential for the ranch’s survival. The Ladder S was all she had in the world.

And she was very much afraid she had already lost it.

“I wish Mac were still here,” Elyssa said unhappily. “He liked women even less than you do, but—”

“Smart man.”

“—nobody knew the Ladder S the way he did,” she said, ignoring Hunter’s interruption. “Every ravine, every spring, where the grass was good and in which season, even the marsh. He knew all of it.”

“Didn’t do him much good against the Culpeppers, did it?”

Hunter lifted one of Bugle Boy’s big hooves and began cleaning it with swift movements of a hoof-pick.

Slowly Elyssa shook her head, blinking against the tears that burned at the back of her eyes.

“I tried to find Mac,” she said in a husky, ragged voice. “As soon as I heard shooting, I grabbed the shotgun and rode Leopard out of here at a dead run.”

“Don’t blame yourself,” Hunter said. “It probably was all over before you even tightened Leopard’s cinch.”

“I didn’t bother.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“With a saddle,” Elyssa explained. “Or a bridle.”

“Girl, only an idiot would ride—”

“I didn’t even find where Mac had fallen,” Elyssa said, not hearing any words but her own. “I searched until a thunderstorm broke and washed away the tracks. Then I quartered the land until it was too dark to tell trees from rocks.”

“You
are
a fool! What if the Culpeppers had found you?”

“I was afraid Mac was lying injured out in the storm, maybe even dying,” Elyssa said tautly. “I couldn’t just turn my back and leave him to the cold rain.”

“Getting grabbed by the Culpeppers wouldn’t have helped Mac one damned bit. But you didn’t think of that, did you? All you thought of was tearing around in the rain like the heroine of some fool dime novel.”

Elyssa’s mouth turned down at the corners. She watched as Hunter went to work cleaning another of Bugle Boy’s hooves.

“You’re going to love Penny,” Elyssa said wryly. “She said the same thing, and more besides.”

“Who is Penny?” Hunter asked, though he already knew.

But it was the sort of question that a man new to the area would be expected to ask.

Hunter wanted Elyssa to go on thinking he was just one more gun-handling drifter looking for work. If she knew he gave a damn only about tracking down Culpeppers, not about the fate of the Ladder S, Elyssa would likely fire him before he even started.

Then there would be merry hell to pay getting within rifle range of the Culpeppers.

Hunter had learned in the past two years that the Culpeppers left men watching their back trail. The only way to get close to the gang was to blend into the landscape.

The ramrod of the Ladder S would be invisible.

“Penelope Miller is kind of an aunt,” Elyssa explained, “like Mac was kind of an uncle. And Bill, too.”

“Kind of?”

“Penny was my mother’s…companion, I guess. She cooked and sewed and cleaned, but she was always more than a hired housekeeper.”

Hunter looked over his shoulder at Elyssa. She had the silk shawl clutched around her shoulders like a suit of armor.

Women sure put stock in finery
, Hunter thought, remembering Belinda.

And they sure do sulk when they don’t get fancy clothes
.

Hunter dropped Bugle Boy’s hoof and picked up another. Caked dirt flew as he went to work with the pick.

“Penny is like family,” Elyssa said. “It was the same for Mac. He was no blood relation, but he was a great friend of Father’s. And Bill’s, too. Without Mac, the Ladder S would have fallen apart long ago.”

Hunter barely heard. He was still thinking about Belinda. When he realized it, he was angry with himself.

Living in the past does no good
, Hunter thought.
It can’t bring back the dead.

But it just might prevent me from making the same mistake twice. Elyssa is just like Belinda was, a liplicking little flirt.

I’d better never forget it, no matter how hot Elyssa makes me with her scent and swinging hips
.

“Bill,” Hunter said, dragging his attention back to the matter at hand. “Would that be Bill the Hermit?”

“That’s what some people call him.”

“But not you.”

“No,” Elyssa said. “He’s a good man, despite…”

Hunter heard the softness in Elyssa’s voice and wondered just how friendly she was with good old Bill.

Even though Hunter knew it was none of his business, he found himself too curious for his own comfort.

“Despite what?” Hunter pressed.

Elyssa hesitated. Then she pulled her shawl more closely around her throat.

“Every man has his blind spots,” she said finally.

Especially if big-eyed little girls are involved
, Hunter thought sardonically.
More men have gone to perdition on the swing of a woman’s hips than any other way
.

“Besides the Culpeppers, is anything else troubling your ranch?” Hunter asked. “Drought or bad water or not enough feed to carry stock through the winter?”

Again, Elyssa hesitated.

There had been small things, more annoyances than troubles, really. A wagon axle that broke, spilling hay into the wind. A mower whose blades were so badly dulled they ruined more hay than they cut. A dead cow in the little reservoir on House Creek, which forced them to haul water all the way from Cave Creek until the fouled spring cleared.

Just bad luck
, Elyssa told herself.
If you complain of it to Hunter, he’ll think you’re a spoiled, whining little girl
.

“No,” she said firmly. “No other troubles. So many cattle have been run off that wintering over the rest—after we fulfill the army contract, of course—won’t be a problem.”

“How many go to the army?”

“Three hundred is the minimum. We’re their only local source of livestock.”

“How many head of breeding stock do you have?” Hunter asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Guess.”

“Fewer than two hundred.”

Hunter looked at Elyssa, wondering if she knew just how close to the edge the Ladder S was skating.

“If you have to sell cows instead of steers to meet the army contract,” Hunter said, “you’ll be between a
rock and a hard place when it comes to increasing your herd. Or can you afford to buy more breeding stock?”

“If I don’t meet the contract, I’ll have barely enough money to buy supplies for Penny and myself for the winter,” Elyssa admitted.

Hunter was frowning as he went to work on another of Bugle Boy’s hooves. Lack of breeding stock would doom the Ladder S as surely, if more slowly, than Culpepper raids.

Not my problem
, Hunter told himself curtly.
I came here for Culpeppers, not to manage some sassy little flirt’s life. She’ll find some nice, gullible fool of a boy to do that for her
.

Hunter released the hoof and smacked Bugle Boy on the haunch, signaling the end of the grooming. The horse looked up momentarily from eating, snorted, and buried his muzzle deep in the grain again. Hunter checked the bucket hanging over the side of the stall, saw that the water was fresh, and turned to Elyssa.

“So,” Hunter said. “It’s just Culpeppers troubling you.”

“Just?” Elyssa made a disgusted sound. “If you say that, you don’t know Culpeppers. Those ruffians are the worst of a bad lot of renegades set on the loose by the end of the war.”

“So I’ve heard.”

Without looking at Elyssa, Hunter unlatched the stall door and motioned her through.

Although the opening was big enough for three men to stand side by side, Elyssa paused before walking past Hunter. He seemed to fill the doorway. She would have to go very close to him to get by.

The thought made her pulse kick.

Did he plan it that way
? she asked herself.

Hunter waited with an air of thinning patience.

Don’t be silly
, Elyssa told herself.
Hunter has made
it quite clear that he finds me even less attractive than the English lords did. They, at least, were angling for a mistress
.

All Hunter is angling for is a smack on his unshaven cheek
.

Head high, gripping the silk shawl with one hand and her flimsy silk skirts with the other, Elyssa swept past Hunter.

There was a distinct ripping sound as her skirt caught on a nail.

E
lyssa was jerked to a stop. Instinctively she threw out her hands for balance. The silk shawl slithered off one shoulder as she windmilled her arms, teetering on the edge of falling.

A hand clad in black leather closed around the colorful shawl, saving it from a descent to the fragrant stall floor. Simultaneously Hunter’s right arm closed around Elyssa’s body just above her waist.

She made a startled sound as she was lifted off her feet without warning. Her legs started flailing.

“Hold still before you rip your skirts right off,” Hunter said curtly. “Or was that what you had in mind?”

Elyssa made another ragged sound.

The feel of Hunter’s naked right hand just beneath her left breast made Elyssa feel light-headed. The warmth of his hand seeped through the thin layers of silk dress and chemise. Her heart kicked frantically. She dragged at breath but couldn’t get enough air into her lungs.

“Hang on,” Hunter said, backing up a step.

Abruptly his grip shifted.

Elyssa forgot about trying to breathe and clung to Hunter. The weight of her breasts was supported on his hard forearm while he bent, still holding her, and eased silk free from the nail.

The heat of Hunter was like a brand on Elyssa’s soft flesh.

“Let go,” a deep voice said right next to her ear. “You’re free now.”

But Elyssa wasn’t. She was held motionless by Hunter’s lean fingers curling across her ribs, brushing against the lower curve of one breast. Her heart was hammering so fiercely she was afraid Hunter would hear it.

Then she realized he wouldn’t have to hear her wild heartbeat. He could probably feel it against the naked skin of his right hand.

Elyssa tilted her head and looked back over her shoulder at Hunter, trying to see his eyes. It was difficult. His eyelids were half-lowered, shielding his eyes.

Yet she sensed he was looking at her breasts and feeling their weight against his arm.

An odd, shimmering sensation went through Elyssa, as though she had stepped naked into a pool of warm water. Suddenly her nipples tightened and pushed against the silk in twin, hard peaks.

Hunter’s breath came in with a swift ripping sound.

Elyssa turned more toward him, struggling softly against his strength, determined to see his eyes. When she succeeded, the glittering intensity of his glance sent a strange wave of weakness through her. She sagged against him.

Then her own breath came in raggedly. The quintessentially male flesh pressed against her hip was rigid, unmistakable even to a virgin.

“Hunter?” Elyssa whispered, her voice uneven.

“Stand up or I’ll drop you.”

The contempt in Hunter’s voice was like being dumped into ice water.

“I didn’t mean—” she began, only to have her voice break. “You didn’t have to—”

“
Stand up
.”

Hastily Elyssa straightened her legs, only to find that her knees were still wobbly. She took a half-step, stumbled, and grabbed the nearest thing for support.

It was Hunter, of course. The word he said under his breath made her wince.

“What the hell is going on here?” demanded a harsh male voice from the darkness beyond the stall.

Hunter looked up. A big, heavily muscled young man was striding down the aisle between the stalls, coming toward Hunter and Elyssa. He was wearing a six-gun on his hip and carrying a coil of rope in his hands.

The rope worried Hunter almost as much as the six-gun. He knew exactly how much damage a rope used as a club could do in close quarters.

Without making a fuss about it, Hunter took a step away from Elyssa, giving himself room to fight.

And the angry flush on the young man’s face told Hunter that it might easily come to blows.

“Who—oh, it’s you, Mickey,” Elyssa said, glancing away from the young man.

Cautiously Elyssa shook out her skirts. Nothing snagged. She took a step. Her knees didn’t buckle.

She let out a soundless sigh of relief.

“Did you want something?” Elyssa asked.

When no answer came immediately, she looked up. Mickey was staring blatantly at her breasts.

The knowledge both embarrassed Elyssa and made her angry.

A flush bloomed on her cheeks as she snatched her shawl off Hunter’s arm. With quick, jerky motions she wrapped the silk around her shoulders, concealing her breasts from Mickey’s pale blue eyes.

Then Elyssa realized that she hadn’t minded one bit when Hunter had looked at her with male hunger.

Her hands fumbled, nearly dropping the shawl.

“You can bet your little tits I want something,”
Mickey said roughly. “I want to know what the hell you’re doing rolling around in the hay with some damned stranger!”

“You overstep yourself,” Elyssa said icily.

“The hell you say!”

Ignoring Mickey, Elyssa knotted the slippery silk in place around her shoulders.

The young man’s arm shot forward. His broad fingers closed around Elyssa’s upper arm with such cruel force that she cried out. He leaned forward until his face was only inches from hers.

“I’m tired of your uppity ways,” Mickey snarled. “You’ve been sashaying around, promising me all kinds of things with your eyes and hips, and now you’re giving them away to a no-account drifter.”

The reek of alcohol on Mickey’s breath was enough to make Elyssa’s stomach lurch. She had learned to hate that smell since she had come back and found Bill hell-bent on drinking himself into an untimely grave.

“Let go of me,” Elyssa said distinctly.

“Not until I’m good and ready. It’s time you learned who’s boss around here!”

“I am,” Hunter said.

As he spoke, Hunter dropped his left hand onto Mickey’s right shoulder. It could have been a gesture of goodwill, one man to another.

But it wasn’t.

“I’m Hunter, the new ramrod of the Ladder S.”

Though Hunter’s tone was easy, his grip wasn’t. Beneath the supple riding glove on his left hand, his fingers probed, discovered, and then ground nerve and tendon against bone.

Mickey let go of Elyssa for the simple reason that his hand no longer had any strength.

She stepped quickly beyond his reach. With shaking fingers she rubbed her bruised flesh.

“Who are you, boy?” Hunter asked gently, bearing down even more.

“Mickey,” the younger man gasped. “Mickey Barber.”

Hunter eased the pressure on Mickey’s right shoulder. There was no possibility of a gunfight for the moment. Mickey couldn’t have held a gun in his numbed hand.

“Well, Mickey Barber,” Hunter drawled, “the reason I’m ramrod and you’re not is real simple. You haven’t figured out yet that there’s no point in getting your kettle all aboil over a little flirt like Miss Sutton.”

Elyssa spun toward Hunter so quickly that she nearly stumbled.

“Some girls,” Hunter continued matter-of-factly, “just don’t know they’re alive unless some fool boy is admiring them.”

“I am not a flirt,” Elyssa said between her clenched teeth. “Nor am I a girl. I am the owner—
and boss
—of the Ladder S.”

Hunter’s slate-gray glance raked over Elyssa. Though he didn’t say a word, she knew he was remembering how her breasts had felt against his arm, how her heart had raced beneath his palm, and how her hip had pressed against his suddenly erect flesh.

A combination of anger, embarrassment, and passion flushed Elyssa’s cheeks and tightened her throat, making it impossible for her to talk.

Without a word, Hunter turned away from Elyssa as though she didn’t exist.

“Now,” Hunter drawled to Mickey, “you don’t look like a fool boy. You look like a strapping young lad who puts in a day’s work for a day’s pay.”

Elyssa waited for Mickey to give the rough side of his tongue to Hunter. To her surprise, the younger man simply nodded a bit sullenly.

“Thought so,” Hunter said with satisfaction. “Nice rope you have. Mind if I look at it?”

Before Mickey could react, the rope was in Hunter’s left hand.

“Braided leather, not hemp,” Hunter said admiringly. “A true
la reata
. Takes a good
caballero
to handle a lariat.”

“It belonged to a Mex that came here looking for work,” Mickey said.

“I’ll bet the man is a top hand.”

Mickey shrugged. Then he winced at the pain in his right shoulder.

“I sent him packing,” Mickey said. “We don’t need chili eaters on the Ladder S.”

“What?” Elyssa asked, startled. “When was this?”

The young man’s pale glance slid from Elyssa’s lips to the shawl wrapped around her breasts. The look was that of someone counting his possessions. But very little of Elyssa’s breasts showed beneath the loose silk.

Mickey’s expression told her that he had liked it better the other way.

“Yesterday,” Mickey said.

“Why didn’t you send for me to interview the man myself?” Elyssa demanded.

“No need to bother your pretty head, Miss Elyssa. Specially not over no Mex.”

“Mr. Barber, you have the finesse and intellect of a rockslide,” Elyssa said. “My orders were clear: If a man can ride, rope, and shoot, I want to hire him.”

“He was a—”

“Mexican,” Elyssa finished for Mickey. “Some of my finest hands are Mexican. Or were, until the troubles started.”

“Cowards,” Mickey said.

“Don’t be more stupid than God made you,” Elyssa said impatiently. “They had wives and children to pro
tect. I couldn’t have them on my conscience. I told them to find work on a safer ranch.”

She gave Mickey a disgusted look and turned her attention to Hunter.

“Hunter, you are to hire men without regard to anything except their skill with rope, horse, and gun. Is that clear?”

The corner of Hunter’s mouth shifted just a little bit. It could have been the beginning of a smile.

Or it could have been impatience with Elyssa.

“Yes, ma’am,” he drawled. “Except for one thing.”

“What’s that?” she asked instantly.

“Booze. I won’t hire a man with alcohol on his breath. In fact, there will be no tanglefoot in the bunkhouse while I’m ramrod. A drinking man can get himself killed, and a lot of good men with him.”

Elyssa looked at Mickey with new comprehension.

“Yes,” she said succinctly. “I agree.”

“You do that and you won’t have a man left on the place by sundown,” Mickey said belligerently.

“Oh, I’ll have a
man
left on the place,” Elyssa said. “His name is Hunter.”

“Like I said,” Hunter muttered, giving Mickey a look, “there’s just no need to get your water hot over a flirt. It’s something age teaches you, boy.”

Elyssa’s mouth flattened.

Mickey simply looked sullen. “I’m foreman of the Ladder S.”

“Not anymore,” Hunter said mildly.

“Not ever!” Elyssa said. “I never asked you to be foreman, Mickey. I didn’t like the way you acted toward some of—”

“Chili eaters,” Mickey snarled. “I should have run them off sooner.”

Appalled, Elyssa understood too late what had happened to her best hands.

“You’re fir—” she began.

“You’re one of three hands we have left,” Hunter said, cutting across Elyssa’s words, “so I’ll give you a chance to make it up to Miss Sutton. Do the work of two men, pour the booze into the privy, and you’ve still got a job. Understand me?”

Mickey started to argue, looked at Hunter’s eyes, and held his tongue.

“I’ll be checking out the bunkhouse,” Hunter said. “If I find any booze there, I’ll be purely pissed off and you’ll be walking out of here with no pay in your pocket.”

Sullenly Mickey nodded.

“Go on to the bunkhouse and sober up,” Hunter said. “Tell the other hands I’ll talk to them in the morning.”

Mickey gave Elyssa an angry, baffled look before he turned and stalked back down the aisle.

As soon as the sound of his footsteps faded, Elyssa turned on Hunter.

“I don’t care if Mickey is the last hand between here and the Great Salt Lake,” Elyssa said tightly, “I won’t stand for him lording it over anyone who is smaller, kinder, or a different color than he is. If I had known what he was doing to Shorty and Gomez and Raul, I would have—”

“Gotten somebody killed,” Hunter finished succinctly. “Or were they gun handlers?”

“No.”

“Mickey is.”

Elyssa looked startled.

“How do you know?” she asked.

“The soldiers over at Camp Halleck were talking about it. Said your young beau was fast to draw and quicker to shoot.”

“Mickey? My
beau
? Never!”

“That’s not what they’re saying around Halleck.”

“I’m not responsible for loose talk.”

“Flirts have to take the talk as it comes.”

Elyssa took a slow breath, fighting her temper. When she spoke again, her voice was cool, remote, the voice she had learned to use with good effect on her English cousins.

“You will believe whatever you wish to believe about me,” Elyssa said evenly. “However, you will not insult me in front of others again.”

“Or I’m fired?” Hunter asked sardonically.

“Precisely.”

Hunter’s black eyes narrowed. He was an excellent judge of men. It was one of the skills that had made him a good officer. If Elyssa had been a man, Hunter would have believed she meant every word.

But Hunter wasn’t a good judge of women. He had proved it when he married Belinda.

“You’d lose the ranch just because your nose is out of joint?” Hunter asked.

“You have a higher opinion of yourself than I do. I’m not at all certain you can save the ranch.”

“We’ll make a deal, Sassy.”

“I don’t like that nickname.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

“But you’ll use it anyway,” she said.

“Probably. Are you going to fire me over it?”

“No.”

Hunter narrowed his eyes, surprised again.

“I believe you mentioned a deal,” Elyssa said. “What is it?”

“I’ll round up your cattle and horses. You stop flirting with the men. It’s death on morale.”

“I have never flirted with Mickey or any other hand.”

“Mickey doesn’t seem to think so.”

“Mickey doesn’t think at all.”

Hunter made an impatient sound. “Men don’t think
when their blood is hot. Women know that, and use it against men.”