Warrior (8 page)

Baby’s head turned. Big jaws gently closed over Nevada’s right hand, then released him.

“That’s meant to reassure you,” Eden explained in a soft voice. “It’s a wolf’s kiss. Wolves aren’t quite the same as dogs. They require different things from their friends, whether four-footed or two.”

“What should I do to reassure Baby in return?”

“You already have.”

“How?”

“You accepted his surrender, let him go with his dignity intact, and then praised him with your touch and your voice.” Eden paused thoughtfully. “You read Baby very well, Nevada. Have you ever worked with undomesticated animals?”

“All my life.”

“Really? What kind?”

“Men.”

Eden started to laugh before she realized that there was more truth than humor in what Nevada said. Then she laughed anyway, a bittersweet and very human laughter, accepting what could not be changed in the nature of man and beast.

“Maybe if men had their signals of dominance and submission as well worked out as wolves,” Eden said, “there would be fewer wars.”

“I suspect we had our signals straight once. Then we got civilized and it all went to hell.”

Nevada stood and stretched. His glance fell on the upside-down water bucket, the packsaddle standing on end, and other signs of the romp. The corners of his eyes crinkled slightly.

“Looks like I have my work cut out for me before we go cat hunting,” Nevada said.

Eden’s breath caught. She smiled brilliantly and said in a husky voice, “Thank you.”

He gave her a sideways glance. “For not leaving you to clean up the mess?”

“No,” she said, dismissing the room with a wave of her hand. “For staying here one more day. I know you think I’m silly for worrying about you, but I’m not. Spring, especially in a cold country, is the hardest season on animals. No matter how strong you are, the huge temperature swings stress your body. I’ve seen flu turn into pneumonia

“

Eden’s voice dipped, almost broke and then steadied. “Anyway, if you had ridden off today I would have worried. Now I’ll know where you are and if your fever is really gone.”

“And if I’ve managed to stay on top of Target this time?” Nevada said dryly.

Eden’s laugh was as soft as the creamy skin of her throat. She started to speak but could think of nothing to say except the truth.

“I’m glad you’re staying, Nevada. Not just for my peace of mind, either. Even with fresh snow, no wind, and Baby’s nose, finding cougars out there won’t be easy. I suspect you’re a good tracker.”

“I get by.”

The buried drawl in Nevada’s voice told Eden that he was amused by something. She smiled slightly. “I’ll just bet you do. You don’t miss much, do you?”

“No.”

Eden didn’t need to be told any more. Nevada had lived on the razor edge of awareness for so long that he had forgotten there was any other way to live.

“I’ll put your skills to work every chance I get,” Eden said. “There’s so little time.”

“I heard you’d be here until June. At least, I heard the government cat expert would be here. That’s you, isn’t it?”

“After a fashion, but probably there will be more than one cat expert coming and going. My grant money is private, administered through the university at Boulder, but I’m working in conjunction with a federal study of cougars. The whole study will cover a decade. My part will last only as long as the tracking snows do, unless I find a female that’s denned up with cubs. Then I might be able to stretch things into May or June.”

Nevada bent over, righted the packsaddle with an easy motion and asked, “What is your part?”

“A feasibility study.”

“Of what?”

“Whether it’s possible to monitor cougars without drugging them, putting on bulky radio collars, and then turning the cats loose to lead a supposedly normal life.”

“Yeah, I always wondered how many animals the scientists lost that way,” Nevada said dryly. “Drugs are tricky things, especially with cats. As for the radio collars

” He shrugged, bent over a bedroll and began putting it back together with the smooth, efficient motions of a man who has done a task so often he no longer has to think about it. Eden worked alongside Nevada, watching him from the corners of her eyes, fascinated by his unconscious grace and his casual acceptance of his own physical strength.

“What about the radio collars?” Eden asked, realizing belatedly that Nevada had stopped talking and was watching her watch him.

“I’m no specialist,” Nevada said, looking away from Eden, straightening a blanket with a casual snap of his wrist, “but I’ve noticed one thing about wild animals. If there’s anything different about an animal, the others shun him. Or they attack him. Makes me wonder if anyone has thought about that when they wrap a few pounds of brightly packaged radio collar around a wild animal and turn it loose. Then the specialists come back every few days or weeks in a helicopter or a small plane and buzz the hell out of the local wildlife trying to track down the radio collar’s signal.”

“Somebody around here must have thought about it,” Eden said. She knelt and began stacking firewood that had been scattered when Nevada had rolled into it. “Dr. Martin said my particular part of the grant money came from one of the local ranchers.” Suddenly she turned and looked at Nevada. “Was it you?”

He hesitated fractionally in the act of righting the water bucket, then shrugged and said, “I’m a cowhand, not a rancher. Luke and Ten own the land.”

Eden waited, certain that she was right. Only someone who respected and understood wildlife would have given money for a study that didn’t disrupt the animals’ normal lives. It was obvious that Nevada felt an unusual affinity for wild animals. She had never seen Baby take to a person with such ease.

“Both Luke and Ten admire the cougars, but they have their hands full raising kids and cattle,” Nevada continued, “and at the same time they’re protecting and excavating some of the Anasazi sites at September Canyon. On a ranch there’s never enough money to do everything that should be done.”

“So you paid for part of the grant.”

Again, Nevada shrugged. “The cougars are staging a comeback around here. Now, I believe the cats live on wild food rather than on Rocking M beef, but I couldn’t prove it even though I spent a lot of time chasing cats when I should have been chasing cattle. So I took some of the money from the gold mine Mariah found and told the university to find an expert who could study our cougars without drugging or harassing them.”

“I won’t drug the cats,” Eden said. “But having Baby on their trail might constitute harassment.”

Nevada’s mouth shifted subtly beneath his beard. He reached down and ruffled the wolf’s sleek fur. Baby leaned into the touch, enjoying it.

“Dogs have been chasing cats at least as long as men have been chasing women,” Nevada said, giving Eden a brief, sidelong look. “I think the cats might even get a kick out of a good race. Cougars will run like hell, but once they’re up in a tree, they relax. Hell, I’ve seen more than one cougar curl up for a nap in some tall timber while a pack of hounds went crazy barking down below.” Frowning thoughtfully, Nevada turned away from scratching Baby’s ears. “That reminds me – does Baby ever bark?”

“Rarely.”

Nevada’s mouth flattened. “Then you’ve got the wrong hunting dog no matter how good Baby’s nose is. A cougar will run from a barking dog, even if it’s no bigger than a Scottish terrier. But a dog that doesn’t bark will be attacked, no matter how big it is.”

“Don’t worry. Cats are the exception to Baby’s code of silence. When he’s on a hot cat trail, Baby makes more noise than a pack of foxhounds.”

“Good.” Nevada looked around the room, which was neat once more. “That leaves just one other thing to settle before we go hunting. Who’s Mark?”

Eden looked up, surprised by the sudden edge in Nevada’s voice. “What?”

“Baby’s wrestling partner,” Nevada said flatly. “The man who broke his arm.”

“Oh. That Mark. He’s my brother.”

Nevada grunted. “How many Marks do you know?”

“Just two.”

Nevada waited, watching Eden with pale green eyes as she stacked the last piece of firewood, stood up and dusted her hands on her pants.

“The second Mark was my fiancé for a time,” she continued. “Then he discovered that being lifelong friends wasn’t the same thing as really wanting a woman. He took one look at Karen and knew something important had been missing from our relationship. They were married a month later.”

Nevada had had a lot of practice reading people. He saw no indications of distress in Eden as she talked about her broken engagement. Her voice was even, supple, almost amused. Not at all the way it had been when she had discussed flu turning into pneumonia.

“You sound like you didn’t mind losing Mark to another girl,” Nevada said, walking slowly across the room toward Eden.

“I didn’t lose him. We’re still friends.”

Skepticism showed in the arch of Nevada’s black eyebrows. Eden watched with widening eyes as he came closer and then closer still, not stopping until he was so close that she could feel the heat from his big body.

“It’s true,” she said, puzzled by Nevada’s intensity. “Mark and I are still friends.”

“Then you were never lovers.”

Eden made a soft, startled sound deep in her throat. “How did you know?”

“Easy. Once a man had you, he’d want you again with every breath he took.” Nevada shrugged, but the silver-green intensity of his eyes didn’t diminish. “Which means Mark never had you, because he let you go.”

<< 6 >>

The elemental harmonics of a wolf’s howl shivered over the land before dissipating on the wind. Nevada froze, listening with every fiber of his body. The sound came again, rising and falling, a song sung to the primal memories that existed in every human soul. The eerie ululation faded into the wind. Silence reigned once more.

“A wolf’s howl has to be one of the most beautiful sounds on earth,” Nevada said in a hushed voice.

Eden didn’t disagree. She had heard only one thing more compelling – Nevada’s deep voice when he looked at her and told her that any man who had her would never let her go. Even now she could hardly believe Nevada had said it, meant it, and then turned away, picked up his rifle and calmly asked her if she was ready to go hunting.

The memories made Eden’s fingers tremble as she cupped her hands around her mouth and answered Baby with a call that was more musical than a shout and less structured than a yodel. When she finished, Nevada looked at her expectantly.

“Baby’s just checking in,” Eden explained. “Now we know where he is and he knows where we are. No cats, though.”

Nevada nodded. “He won’t hit cougar sign on this side of the stream unless a new cat has moved in since I was here last. Once Baby gets to the other side of the stream, though, it shouldn’t be long before he hits a trail. A young female staked out her territory there two years ago.”

“How young? Did she have cubs?”

“The first year she didn’t mate. But this year there was some real caterwauling around here for the two weeks she and her mate traveled together.” The left corner of Nevada’s mouth lifted a bit and he added blandly, “Seems like the young females always scream the loudest.”

“There’s a reason they scream,” Eden said before she could think better of it.

“Really? What?”

All right, how am I going to get out of this one? Eden asked herself wryly, caught between embarrassment and amusement.

“Er, take my word for it,” she said, knowing her cheeks were bright with something more than cold.

“Give me some words and I’ll see how I take them.”

“Better yet,” Eden said quickly, thinking of a graceful exit from the topic, “I’ll give you a textbook on cat anatomy.”

“Did you bring it with you?”

She sighed. “No.”

“Then we’re back to words.”

Eden suspected she was being teased. Nevada’s eyes had a definite crinkle at the corners. She took a deep breath, reminded herself that she and Nevada were both adults, and began speaking as though she were in a graduate seminar.

“Male cats are built to begin, but not to end, copulation. Therefore, disengagement must be rather uncomfortable for the females.”

Nevada gave Eden a sideways glance. “I’m missing something.”

“Barbs,” she said succinctly.

The sleek black of Nevada’s beard shifted a bit as his mouth quirked, but he said only, “Can’t be all that bad—”

“Spoken like a true male,” she muttered.

“—because the older females keep coming back for more,” Nevada finished, ignoring Eden’s interruption.

She saw the gleam in his eyes and knew that Nevada was teasing her. She struggled not to laugh. It was impossible. The wicked light in Nevada’s eyes reminded her of Baby’s when he had danced up to her with a mouthful of forbidden socks and lured her into play.

Nevada listened to the rippling warmth of Eden’s laughter and silently decided that it was even more beautiful than a wolf’s wild song. He fought the impulse to put an arm around Eden and hug her to his side, and then to bend down and taste lips whose tempting curves haunted him at every moment.

I should have left yesterday, storm or no storm. If I stay much longer I’m going to reach out and take what I need more than I need air.

Having her would be like sinking into fire, all hot and clean and wild, no boundaries, no restraints, nothing but the two of us and the fire burning higher and higher

A wolf’s howl leaped and twisted in the wild silence, calling to them, demanding their attention.

“He’s found cat sign!” Eden said. She looked eagerly around the landscape, trying to decide on the quickest route to Baby. “It could be bobcat, I suppose.”

“I’m betting it isn’t,” Nevada said promptly, heading toward the creek. “There’s a big old fir on top of that rise. The lady cougar likes to lie up beneath the lowest limbs and watch the land.”

“Hurry,” Eden said, following. “Once Baby starts running, we may not see him again until he’s ready to come into the cabin and chew the ice out from between his toes.”

Nevada moved swiftly down the slope toward the creek that gleamed blackly between low banks of snow. Despite the snow that had fallen yesterday, neither Nevada nor Eden needed the snowshoes they had tied to their backpacks. Only in the steepest ravines or in the most dense forest was snowpack more than six inches deep. Yesterday’s storm had filled in minor hollows and ripples, leaving behind a pristine surface that took and held tracks as though it had been designed for just that purpose.