Carol Finch (2 page)

Clem whistled while he worked. The former Texas cowboy and his brigands had turned to cattle rustling and horse thieving and had been hiding out in Indian Territory for several months. But very soon, Clem would rejoin his two friends, who were sitting in the jail wagon at marshal headquarters.

Gideon crept closer to the stubble-faced, scraggly-haired outlaw. When Gideon noticed the trip wire six inches in front of his boot, he stopped dead in his tracks. He glanced speculatively from the wire to Clem. No wonder the wily outlaw was lounging by the campfire, looking carefree and unconcerned while he brewed his morning coffee. The sneaky bastard was
inviting
Gideon to come closer and fall into a trap.

Giving Clem more credit than he did previously, Gideon stepped over the booby trap and surveyed the area. If he were Clem, he’d set another trip wire. Sure enough, partially concealed by fallen leaves and twigs, another trip wire awaited Gideon. But he carefully avoided it.

He’d seen all kinds of schemes and traps during his years as a member of the Osage Reservation Police Force and then as a commissioned deputy marshal serving the federal court in Fort Smith. Dealing with Clem served to remind Gideon of his motto: Don’t believe everything you hear or see. And don’t trust anyone but yourself and your own family.

Gideon had seen too many men die with stunned expres
sions on their faces. He didn’t plan to join the ranks of the departed.

Crouching in the underbrush near a tree, Gideon grabbed his dagger from his boot then hurled it into the tree stump where Clem sat. Wheeling quickly, Clem fired off three shots that sailed ten feet over Gideon’s hiding place. Then Gideon tossed a broken tree limb to his left and watched Clem fire off two more shots. The outlaw was lightning-quick with his pistol.

“Show yourself!” Clem barked. “Only cowards crawl and slither on their bellies in the grass.”

Gideon had been taunted, ridiculed and baited scores of times and he really didn’t give a damn about an outlaw’s opinion of him. Clem could call him The Devil Himself and it wouldn’t faze Gideon. His objective was to rid his people’s land of the thieves and murderers that invaded the territory to escape the law from neighboring states.

“You gonna show yourself, yellow-belly?” Clem taunted.

Gideon didn’t reply, just surveyed the campsite once again. Since Clem wore double hostlers on his hips, Gideon figured the outlaw had seven shots left in his six-shooters. Plus, he had access to Gideon’s dagger—and perhaps a dagger of his own. Also, there was an empty scabbard on the saddle Clem had used as his pillow for sleeping. Gideon predicted there was also a rifle tucked under the pallet.

“Friend or foe?” Clem demanded impatiently. “Coffee’s ready. You coming in or not?”

Gideon glanced overhead then grabbed another broken limb to hurl upward.

“Hell!” Clem growled when he heard the clatter in the tree above him.

Since Clem expected someone to drop down on him, Gideon took advantage of the distraction and charged
forward. By the time Clem realized the threat was behind him, not above him, Gideon slammed into his back and knocked away the pistol. Clem went down with a grunt and groan then spewed profanity. Before Clem could roll away to grab a dagger or his pistol, Gideon snatched up his knife and pressed it into Clem’s throat.

“Wanted dead or alive, according to Judge Parker,” Gideon snarled threateningly. “You decide how you want to meet him. As for me, I’d just as soon toss your sorry carcass over the back of a horse and let the undertaker deal with you.”

Clem glanced over his thick shoulder. “Who
are
you?”

“Deputy U.S. Marshal Gideon Fox.” He manacled Clem’s wrists then hauled him to his feet.

“Well damn,” Clem muttered. “I ain’t been in the territory too long but I’ve heard of you and none of it’s good. A real bastard who’ll chase a man to the gates of hell…and beyond, I’m told. A blue-eyed half-breed to boot. I never did care much for Injuns.”

“Quit flattering me. It’ll get you nowhere.”

From Lori’s hiding place behind a boulder on the hillside, she watched the tall, muscular man, wearing black breeches, a dark shirt, leather vest and boots move through the soupy fog like a shadow within a shadow to capture the outlaw. The man who claimed to be a Deputy U.S. Marshal was exceptionally quick on his feet and handy with weapons.

Although Lori had overheard the conversation, she was leery about approaching the lawman. But after holing up in caves for five days—and encountering one unsociable panther, while dodging Sonny Hathaway and Teddy Collins—she decided a lawman could offer legal protection.
She needed to tell her side of the story about the murder and clear her name. Plus, whoever had killed Tony was running loose, which meant she was still in danger.

Lori had grieved the loss of her friend as she had washed his blood from her shirt in a nearby stream.

Unfortunately, she hadn’t been able to wash away the torturous memory of that tragic night.

Several of Tony’s comments continued to baffle her. She welcomed a formal investigation that would give her the opportunity to make her statement and find the man who shot Tony. Whatever had been going on that fateful night, Lori owed her life to Tony, who’d taken the fatal bullet for her.

Her regretful thoughts trailed off and she came to attention after the lawman had captured the outlaw. Now was the time to pick her way down the rugged hillside to introduce herself to the lawman. Mentally rehearsing what she intended to say, Lori led Drifter around the trees and boulders, then tethered him. She could only hope the Deputy U.S. Marshal would offer protection and agree to accompany her back to Russell Trading Post to clear her name and reassure her father that she was alive.

Gideon pushed Clem ahead of him, just in case there was another booby trap strategically situated between Clem and his stolen horse. When Clem halted, trying to lure Gideon into taking the lead and dragging him forward to spring the trap, Gideon stayed put.

“We can still do this the easy way,” Gideon breathed down Clem’s neck. “I can shove you into the trip wire and you can shoot yourself. You’ll be as dead as a man can get. Not me. I’ll be around to collect your bounty and the reward.”

“You’re all heart, Fox,” Clem said and scowled.

“I hear that a lot…
Now move.
”

Muttering, Clem stepped over the booby trap.

“Where’d you learn to set traps?” Gideon asked conversationally as he quick-marched Clem to his stolen horse—the evidence needed to stick him in Judge Parker’s jail, awaiting a prison sentence.

“I rode with Confederate raiders in Kansas during the war.” Clem glanced back at Gideon and smirked disrespectfully. “Where’d you learn to
avoid
’em? In Injun warrior training school?”

“Sure. I graduated at the head of my class,” Gideon replied without missing a beat. “I get even better at it while dealing with former guerilla fighters like you. I have a lot of practical experience with sneaky, lying, cheating, thieving white men.”

Swearing foully, Pecos Clem tugged on the rope Gideon had used to tie him to the tree. Although Clem called Gideon several rude, disrespectful names, he ignored them and saddled the gray stallion. According to the reports delivered to the marshals’ mobile headquarters, Pecos Clem and his two cohorts had raided an Osage ranch and stolen several horses. The gray was the last one recovered.

“How’d you find me?” Clem sniped as Gideon hoisted him onto the horse then tied his feet to the stirrups. “Did my backstabbing friends squeal on me? Damn those rascals!”

“Nope, I smelled you two miles away,” Gideon replied.

“
I
’m not the stinking Injun around here.
You
are,” he muttered hatefully. “We ran off your redskin cousins in Texas and herded them into this territory. If it was up to me, you and your kind would be dead and gone.”

Gideon’s response was a snort. Clem could spout insults until he ran out of breath. Gideon was ridding Indian
reservations in the territory of white criminals and he was protecting
his
people from harm. That’s what mattered.

“You hear what I said, Injun?” Clem ridiculed. “I—”

His voice trailed off at the same moment that Gideon noticed movement in the shifting fog. The sun broke free briefly, leaving a pocket of light shimmering on the hillside. A shapely female in her early twenties emerged from the hazy shadows of trees and underbrush. Her long curly hair caught in the sparkling sunlight and danced like red-and-gold flames.

She was tall—maybe five foot six inches, he guessed. Plus, she was all too alluring in brown, trim-fitting breeches that accentuated the shapely curve of her hips and the white shirt that molded itself provocatively to her full breasts.

He blinked twice, wondering if he was seeing a mirage or some sort of mystical apparition. The shifting fog and glittering spears of sunlight gave the woman an ethereal quality impossible to ignore. The world seemed eerily still and Gideon stood transfixed. Even Pecos Clem seemed too dazed to attempt escape while Gideon was hopelessly distracted.

Honest to goodness, Gideon had never seen a woman so captivating and alluring in all his thirty-two years of vast and varied experience. If there
were
white men’s angels sent down from above, he’d like to think this was what an angel looked like. Either that or she was one of the Indian spirit guides he’d heard described by his Osage mother.

And yet, a quiet voice inside his head whispered,
Here comes trouble,
and the cynic he’d become paid close attention.

“G
ideon Fox?” Her voice floated toward him on the slightest hint of a breeze.

How’d she know my name?
he asked himself, stunned.

Gideon spoke not a word while the woman moved gracefully toward him. When she came close enough for him to make out her facial features, which were surrounded by that shiny mass of flame-gold hair, the astonishing sight of her stole his breath right out of his lungs. Alert golden eyes, rimmed with a thick fringe of black lashes, focused intently on him. She had a creamy complexion, a pert nose and plump pink lips ripe for kissing.

Hell and damn! He couldn’t recall another time in his life when he’d been so awed by the sight of a woman. He couldn’t seem to look away, just stood there wondering if he had set off a trip wire, died and ended up on the spiritual pathway to the Osage Afterlife and didn’t know it yet.

“Are you real?” Clem chirped, obviously as hypnotized
as Gideon by the unexplained appearance of the bewitching creature that had materialized out of nowhere.

She glanced at Clem for a half second then fixed those captivating golden eyes on Gideon and said, “My name is Lorelei Russell and I need your assistance, Marshal Fox.”

The fairy-tale image shattered like broken glass. Gideon had heard that name the previous day in marshal camp. A messenger had arrived to alert the lawmen that a woman had murdered her lover then fled into the rugged Osage Hills. Apparently, she hadn’t realized the network of information passed quickly among the roaming bands of deputy marshals who patrolled Indian Territory.

If she thought to attach herself to him, after cleverly making use of the fog and sunlight to bewitch him, then she thought wrong. No matter how lovely and captivating she was—and she definitely
was
—she wasn’t getting her hooks into Gideon Fox. His hardscrabble life had taught him to be wary and suspicious. Dealing with ruthless criminals made him excessively cynical and cautious. Gideon wasn’t falling into her trap, either.

To ensure Pecos Clem couldn’t escape, Gideon double-checked the ropes that held the outlaw to the saddle. He’d be damned if he let himself be distracted by sinful temptation at its best—or worst, depending on how you looked at it. He did not intend to lose one prisoner while capturing another.

“What can I do for you, Miz Russell?” Gideon asked as nonchalantly as he knew how.

“I would like for you to escort me to my father’s trading post near Winding River so I can clear up a misunderstanding and track down a murderer who killed my friend.”

So she planned to use him as her protective shield, did she? He wasn’t surprised. Half the people in this world
expected him to do favors for them. With the exception of his two younger brothers and his sister-in-law, he amended. Then again, even they could become demanding on occasion.

The other half of the population tried to avoid him before he hauled them to Judge Parker’s federal court.

“I’m in the middle of an arrest, Mizz Russell.” He turned directly to face her—and wished he hadn’t. The woman
looked
like she should be against the law and her effect on him was staggering. Gideon tried exceptionally hard to pretend indifference but it wasn’t easy.

She shifted her weight from one booted foot to the other, drawing his unwilling attention to the curve of her hips and her long, shapely legs. “Couldn’t you leave your prisoner with other marshals? I know your mobile headquarters and jail wagon must be around here somewhere.”

“I could,” he acknowledged. “But I’m nine miles west of headquarters.”

She nodded pensively, causing a riot of red-gold curlicue strands of hair to bobble around her exquisite face. “I’ll fetch my horse. After we drop off your prisoner we can head west.”

Gideon had no reason to mistrust her intentions—and no reason not to. “I’ll go with you to retrieve your mount,” he insisted as he tethered the gray horse to a tree. “Clem isn’t going anywhere until I get back.”

Letting Lorelei lead the way wasn’t such a good idea, Gideon decided a moment later. The seductive sway of her hips hypnotized him. Worse, he found himself speculating how this wicked, murdering angel looked naked.

He could picture that curly mane of flame-gold hair spilling over the grass as he settled himself exactly above her. He could imagine the feel of those well-proportioned legs hooked around his waist as he buried himself inside her and fell into the depths of those thick-lashed golden
eyes. It would be like flying into the blistering heat of the sun….

The erotic thought blazed through his mind and scorched his body, leaving it sizzling with forbidden desire. Ruthlessly, Gideon ignored the tingling sensations and reminded himself that no matter how appealing this sinful angel was, she had murdered her lover.

The only reason he’d reacted so fiercely to her was that he’d been away from women too long. His forays to capture criminals in Indian Territory—that encompassed seventy thousand square miles—usually lasted six weeks. He’d been in the wilderness for
five
weeks.
Any
female would look good to him by now, he tried to convince himself.

Unfortunately, this particular woman possessed excessive feminine appeal. The fact that Lorelei had murdered her last lover and wanted Gideon to get her off, scot-free, should have repelled him. But it didn’t, damn it.

“What are you doing out here alone?” Gideon asked as she hiked up the hillside.

“I’m hiding from the two men chasing after me.”

An honest lady outlaw? Interesting. He wondered what her angle was. Everyone had an angle, after all. There was always a catch, always a trap. A man had to stay on his toes to avoid tripping himself up.

“Why are they chasing you?” he asked—as if he didn’t know.

“Because they were ordered to do so by the person who mistakenly thought I committed a crime. Which I didn’t,” she said emphatically as she led the way up a rocky ridge.

“Uh-huh,” he mumbled neutrally.

She approached the sturdy strawberry roan gelding that looked to be too high-spirited for a woman to handle. Apparently, Lorelei Russell could handle men and horses
with the same degree of skill—and he better not let himself forget that. Instinct and intuition had warned him at first sight that she was trouble. Sure enough, he’d been right.

The instant she turned her back to reach for the horse’s reins Gideon pounced. He snaked his arm around her waist and slammed her curvaceous body against his, entrapping her. Instant awareness shot through his body when she squirmed against him in a fierce effort to escape. He was doing a fine job of holding on to his alluring captive and controlling a flaming case of lust until she gouged her elbow into his chest with such force that he couldn’t draw breath. Then she kicked him in the knee—and she would have landed a disabling blow to his crotch if he hadn’t reacted instinctively by jackknifing his body and spinning away.

Growling, Gideon recoiled, then lunged at her when she squirmed from his arms and tried to leap onto her horse. He launched himself through the air and tackled her around the knees before she stuffed a booted foot in the stirrup. She yelped when he forced her facedown on the ground and crawled atop her. She spat out a mouthful of gravel and dirt and cursed him soundly as she tried to buck him off.

“So much for the angelic image you tried to project, hellion,” he growled at the back of her curly head, while she wormed and wriggled ineffectively beneath him.

“What is the matter with you!” she yelled at him.

“There’s a warrant out for your arrest and a price on your head. I’m arresting you for murder,” he snapped as he rolled her to her back and pinned her wrists to the ground.

Wide amber eyes swept up as her full breasts heaved from exertion. Gideon noticed the second button on her shirt had come undone during their scuffle. Before his overly active imagination ran away with itself—again—he
retrieved the spare set of handcuffs that hung on his double holster.

“How did you know about that already?” Lori panted as he snapped the metal bracelets in place.

“I’m a Deputy U.S. Marshal and I’m half Osage. I know all and see all. I can sure as hell see you for what you are,” he muttered as he hauled her abruptly to her feet.

This could not be happening! Lori thought in dismay. She had come to Gideon Fox for help and he had turned on her without giving away the fact that he knew who she was. He had been waiting to pounce on her, damn him.

“Nice horse,” he complimented as he picked her up and tossed her onto the saddle. “Did you steal it?”

“No, Drifter is mine. A gift from my father, in fact.”

She glowered at the brawny marshal whose stubbled beard and collar-length raven hair gave him the appearance of the dark angel of doom. His vivid blue eyes missed nothing as he looked her up and down while he retrieved a coil of rope from his back pocket to lash her foot to the stirrup. She was poised to gouge Drifter the instant Gideon circled to restrain her other foot.

“Don’t try it, honey,” he ordered. “You’re wanted dead or alive, just like Pecos Clem Murphy. Apparently you know what it’s like to shoot somebody so you know it’s messy business. I don’t want to have to do that to you unless necessary.”

“You’d shoot an innocent woman?”

His long, thick lashes framed his steady gaze. He focused on her while he secured her foot. “I have before. The innocent part was up for debate.” He stared pointedly at her. “It is now, too.” This was
not
the kind of man Lori had hoped to contact to help her clear up the horrible misunderstanding that left her running for her life—and now captured. She needed
sympathy and compassion. She needed a man with an open-minded attitude.

Instead, she had tangled with this hard-edged, stone-hearted lawman of mixed heritage. The part of him that carried Indian blood probably resented all white intruders on tribal property. She doubted he cared one whit that she and her father had a special trader’s license to sell goods and transport travelers across the river.

In addition, Gideon Fox had taken one cynical look at her and judged her guilty of the charges mistakenly leveled against her. But then, who was she to criticize? she asked herself. She’d only known him fifteen minutes and she disliked him already. Not because he had his booted feet in two separate civilizations. Not because he was rough around the edges, abrupt mannered and didn’t look the least bit sophisticated or dignified. But because he had wrongly misjudged her and he cared only about the reward he could collect when he hauled her and Clem to Fort Smith for trial.

When Gideon bounded up behind her in the saddle, she stiffened. He was whipcord muscle and imposing strength and she resented the feeling of helpless frustration riveting her. She forgot to breathe when he tucked his chin on her shoulder and wrapped both swarthy arms around her to hold her manacled hands to the pommel of the saddle.

He must have sensed her discomfort because he said, “Easy, honey. I’m only making double damn sure you don’t gouge me in the chest and emasculate me with a blow to the crotch. What little virtue you have left is safe with me.”

“I am not now, nor will I ever be your
honey,
” she snapped, unsettled and annoyed by the betraying sensation of pleasure that having him wrapped around her provoked.

“Nothing but a careless endearment, I assure you,” he
breathed against the side of her neck, setting off another round of tingles that had no business whatsoever assailing her when she so disliked this heartless lawman.

“Would you prefer that I call you
witch
or
hellion
instead of
honey?
”

“I would prefer that you release me.” She shifted restlessly in the circle of his sinewy arms. “Get your own horse, Marshal. Drifter doesn’t like having you riding him and I’m not fond of it, either.”

“You don’t want me riding you?” he asked with entirely too much teasing amusement in his rich baritone voice.

Lori was grateful that he couldn’t see the beet-red blush that worked its way up her neck to splash across her face. “Certainly not!”

His rumbling chuckle reverberated through his broad chest and vibrated against her back, increasing her awareness of him to the extreme. “But if you and I
rode
together, you would expect me to favor you with a quick release from your handcuffs so you could dash off again. Just so you know, I don’t like to be propositioned by lady outlaws.”

“That was as far from a proposition as it could get!” she huffed as she nudged him—hard—with her shoulder. “Give me some space, Fox. I don’t like any man crowding me.”

“Is that why you shot your former lover?”

“I didn’t shoot Tony!” she all but yelled at the infuriating man. “He was bushwhacked and I was nearly a victim caught in the cross fire. In fact, I think maybe
you
gunned him down to collect a reward.”

“
Me?
Hell and damn, woman. I was nowhere near the west side of Osage reservation. I’ve been tracking Pecos Clem.”

“Well then, if not you specifically, then another glorified
executioner for hire whose only concern is the price on a person’s head.”

So there, she thought spitefully as they approached Pecos Clem, who had been secured so effectively he couldn’t have gotten loose if his life depended on it. Now Gideon knew what she thought of bounty hunters wearing the sanctioned labels of Deputy U.S. Marshal. Maybe the marshals who patrolled the territory were the unsung heroes who tried to enforce law and order. But some of them—like Gideon Fox, obviously—were only interested in collecting bounties and relying on decrees of
dead or alive
to make their job easier.

“If you think I’ll sit here and endure a lecture from a feisty, smart-mouthed murderess then you’re wrong,” he growled in her ear. “You can tell your story to Judge Parker. I’m not the least bit interested in what you have to say. My job is to bring you in. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

“But I need to return to the trading post to reassure my father that I’m all right,” she protested hotly. “That is the very least you can do.”