High Country Hero
Lynna Banning
Indulge your fantasies of delicious Regency Rakes, fierce Viking warriors and rugged Highlanders. Be swept away into a world of intense passion, lavish settings and romance that burns brightly through the centuriesEverything Dr Sage West needed to know she’d learned from… a bounty hunter! When she had trekked into the mountains with Cord Lawson to save a life, she’d thought that book learning was all that mattered. Now, one rain-soaked river swim and bare-chested kiss in the sun later, she knew that being alive meant feeling things. But could Sage survive the heartbreak when her tantalising tutor resumed his wandering ways? Life was uncertain, so a man took his pleasures where he found them. That was the law that Cord Lawson lived by.But when he found Sage West everything changed, for this surprising lady doctor sparked something new in his footloose soul – a certainty that he’d at last come home!
Was he a brute? Or a gentleman?
His skin was tanned to the colour of her leather saddle, his chest and back as well. And he wore no drawers…!
An irrational thought flicked through her mind. Could a man’s backside get suntanned right through his jeans?
A brute, she decided. A man who chased others for money. A bounty hunter who would turn in his own father for a price. Hard-headed and hard-hearted.
Then why did he want to save his prisoner’slife?
She could feel him staring at her, asking a silent question. It took all her courage to meet his gaze. His eyes were hard. Calculating. And unusual.
There was something undisciplined about him. Primitive, like a wild animal. A wolf—that was it. A hungry wolf. One who hunted alone.
Lynna Banning has combined a lifelong love of history and literature into a satisfying career as a writer. Born in Oregon, she has lived in Northern California most of her life. After graduating from Scripps College she embarked on a career as an editor and technical writer, and later as a high school English teacher. An amateur pianist and harpsichordist, Lynna performs on psaltery and harp in a medieval music ensemble and coaches in her spare time. She enjoys hearing from her readers. You may write to her directly at P.O. Box 324, Felton, CA 95018, USA, or at carolynw@cruzio.com. Visit Lynna’s website at www.lynnabanning.com
Recent novels by the same author:
HARK THE HARRIED ANGELS
(part of One Starry Christmas anthology) THE SCOUT
HIGH COUNTRY HERO
Lynna Banning
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
HIGH COUNTRYHERO
For my niece, Leslie Yarnes Sugai.
With grateful thanks to Suzanne Barrett,
Kathleen Dougherty, Susan Renison, Tricia Adams,
Bonnie Hamre, Brenda Preston, Carol Crosby
and David Woolston
Chapter One
Russell’s Landing, Oregon 1884
The instant Sage turned the corner onto Main Street, she saw the woman in purple calico barreling down the board sidewalk toward her. Oh, no. Not Mrs. Benbow. The plump seamstress was the biggest busybody in town.
Sage stopped, smiled and prepared to have her ears burned by the latest gossip.
“Ain’t seen it yet, have ya, honey?”
“Seen what?”
“Why, the newspaper, of course. The Willamette Valley Voice. My stars, that man has a tongue somewhere’s between a rattlesnake and a grizzly bear.”
“Mr. Stryker, you mean?”
“Who else?” Nelda Benbow’s voice was sharp with gleeful outrage. “That man gets the whole town in an uproar every single Thursday. Mind you, I don’t think he really believes half the things he publishes in that puffed-up rag of his, but the harm’s done soon as the ink’s dry. And the hurt,” she added in a gentler tone. She sent Sage a pitying look.
“Hurt,” Sage echoed. “Who has Mr. Stryker crucified this time?”
“Best you set down afore you read it, Sage dear.”
The older woman gave her a quick pat on the shoulder and sped on down the walkway toward Duquette’s Mercantile.
It? What “it”?
Sage had troubles enough without worrying over who Mr. Stryker’s latest victim was. Last Thursday it had been Miles Schutte, head of the school board. In an editorial entitled The Three R’s—Rumsoaked, Ridiculous and Rabble-rousing, the newspaper editor had lambasted Mr. Schutte with a stream of inflammatory adjectives and innuendo, all because he had drunk a toast at the school board meeting in honor of the new teacher, Miss Euphemia Prescott. Last year’s schoolmarm, Molly Landon, had gotten married in the spring, and married women weren’t allowed to teach in Douglas County.
Or anywhere else in Oregon, as far as Sage knew. The restriction was positively medieval. One would think mankind would be more enlightened near the end of the nineteenth century.
Perhaps Mr. Stryker would address this inequity? Her neatly buttoned shoes carried her straight to the newspaper office.
At her entrance, the editor rose to his feet. “Good morning, Miss West. Oh, I beg your pardon. Dr. West.”
A thrill of pure pride shot through her. Dr. Sage West. It had taken her six grueling years, and she wanted everyone in town to celebrate her accomplishment. For the first time since its founding, Russell’s Landing had a physician.
“Mr. Stryker.” She smiled at the bony, stern-faced man who stood across the polished wood counter from her. He and his wife, Flora, had never had children of their own. When Sage was growing up, Friedrich Stryker had always slipped lemon drops to her when she had come into the newspaper office with her father.
She dug a five-cent piece from her reticule, dropped it on the counter and scanned the front page. Mugwumps Desert Blaine for Cleveland. Railroad Tunnel Collapses. Republicans Bicker over Tariff.
“Article’s on page three,” the graying newspaper editor said in a dry voice. “My editorial’s on page seven.” He pocketed the coin and retreated to his desk.
Sage flipped the paper open and buried her nose in the third page. The still-wet black ink smelled sharp and oily. Engrossed, she moved to the shop entrance, pushed the door open and stepped out onto the boardwalk.
Recently returned from Philadelphia where she completed her medical studies, Miss Sage Martin West, daughter of Mayor William West and his lovely wife, Henrietta…
She stumbled over a loose board on the walkway.
…away in the East for the past five years…
“Six years,” she murmured. “Almost seven. Oh, excuse me, Miss Nyland. I didn’t see you come out of the mercantile.”
“Reading the article about yourself, are you, Sage?”
“Yes. My, it does seem strange, though. As if I’m somebody else!”
“Come across Friedrich’s editorial yet?”
“No, I—”
“Well, don’t take it too hard, dear.”
Miss Nyland whisked into the millinery shop, where a jaunty straw sun hat with a purple feather hung in the display window. The woman did love her bonnets, Sage remembered. She had worn them even when she taught school, and that was—my gracious!—thirteen years ago! Now Miss Nyland’s prize pupil at Grove School was grown up and wearing bonnets herself. Or should be. Absently Sage smoothed her free hand across her bare head.
She shrugged and went on down the street, her eyes glued to the typeset lines.
…Dr. West has opened her new medical practice at the corner of Maple Falls Lane and Cottage Road, next to the old McConnell homestead.
“Yes!” she exulted. She had her own house, her own reception parlor, her own consulting room.
…office hours are from…
Yes. Oh yes. She was a real doctor at last. And she had come home to keep the town she’d grown up in safe from disease and medical disasters.
She gave a little skip, stepped off the boardwalk and turned to the editorial. The warm June breeze rattled the open pages in front of her face, and she gripped them to keep them still without taking her eyes off the print. Halfway across the rutted road, she came to an abrupt stop.
“’Dried up old maid’?” she yelped. “’So plain a man would have to be blind to…’”
Oh!
She wasn’t “plain.” She was…well, tall. With a high forehead, a nose she’d always wished were a bit shorter, and a mass of hair the color of a muddy horse trough. “But my eyes are nice,” she said aloud.
Anyway, what difference did it make what she looked like? She was a good doctor. A very good doctor.
“I have studied for years!” she announced to the empty street.
A horse tied up in front of the hotel lifted its head and gazed at her with one large dark eye. “Well, I did,” she reiterated. The horse lowered its muzzle into the feed bag lashed to the rail.
Sage moved on across the road, settled herself in one of the rocking chairs in front of the mercantile and snapped open the newspaper again.
Well. Well! “Oh, for pity’s sake!”
Women should be wives and mothers…steadfast at the cradle, happy at the hearth.
“Cooks and nursemaids, is that it, Mr. Stryker? Laundresses and seamstresses and teachers, but not physicians?”
Why not?
She rocked furiously back and forth, then jumped to her feet, crumpled the sheets of newsprint into a ball and retraced her steps to the newspaper office as fast as she could. Before she cleared the doorway, words were tumbling past her lips.
“I thought you were my friend, Mr. Stryker! I thought you—”
Friedrich Stryker leaped from his desk chair and backed away.
“—liked me! Believed in me!”
The man looked stricken. “Well, I do, Miss Sage. I do.”
“But you don’t think I should be a doctor, is that it?”
“Yes, ahem. Exactly my thoughts. You’re a woman—”
She gave him no time to finish. “So what if I am female? I want to be a physician, not a nurse. I’ve wanted to be a physician ever since I was ten years old and my baby brother died. A nurse could not have saved him. A doctor would have known what to do.”
“Well, now, Miss Sage, that is partly—”
She pinned him with her oh-yes-I-can look. “You’re just like my professors at medical school. ‘Take up nursing,’ they advised. ‘Get married. Bear children.’”
“Miss Sage, don’t you aim to get married at all?”
“No, I do not,” she snapped. “First of all, nobody has asked to marry me. And even if someone does, I’ll turn him down. A doctor, especially a woman doctor, scarcely has time for her own needs, let alone those of a family.”
“Well now, that’s just my point.” His voice was steadier now.
Sage warmed to her subject. “There are women doctors all over this country—in Massachusetts and Indiana and Missouri and even Idaho. Just who do you think you are, telling us what we can and cannot do?”
The editor put a trembling hand to his face. “I—I’m a journalist, Miss, uh, Dr. West.”
“Why on earth would you write such claptrap?” she demanded. And after all those lemon drops…
A guilty look crossed Mr. Stryker’s face. “Newspapers have been selling pretty good lately,” he said in a tight voice. “That’s why.”
“Then this town is more backward than I thought.” She heaved the balled-up newspaper across the counter at him, gathered up her peach-sprigged muslin skirt in both hands and exited with as much decorum as she could manage.
The door did not close properly. She reversed direction, reopened it and this time made sure it shut with a satisfying slam.
Outside, she clenched her fists at her sides and began to count. By the time she reached sixty she had stopped shaking and regained power of speech. She walked on past the mercantile and Essie Ramsey’s millinery shop, her shoes hitting the boardwalk so hard her feet tingled. The purple-feathered hat beckoned. She rather fancied it. Was it too ostentatious for a country doctor?
A woman country doctor? She was the first female physician in the entire county. She had been the only woman enrolled at Western Reserve, and she had graduated at the top of her class. At this moment she felt she could do anything.
She marched into the millinery shop.
Ten minutes later she emerged with the purple-feathered hat securely pinned to her dark hair. It was a badge of sorts, she acknowledged. She was a doctor who could handle scalpels and forceps, and she was a female, and females wore bonnets! She would wear it each and every single day, with pride.
When she reached the end of the boardwalk, she continued along the well-worn path that led down to the river, her muslin skirt brushing the black-eyed Susans bordering the road. Four houses down, she turned onto Maple Falls Lane and headed for the trim white house that served as combination professional office and residence.
A saddled gray horse stood outside the picket fence, nibbling her Belle of Portugal roses.
“Stop that!” she admonished. “Move along now. Shoo!”
The horse, the same one that had eyed her outside the hotel, lifted its head, whickered and went back to the pale pink blooms. Sage stepped up and slapped her reticule against its rump. “Shoo!”
“No use, ma’am,” a voice called. “Sugar never moves once I drop the reins.”
Sage looked up to see a pair of dusty black leather boots propped on her front porch railing. From behind the boots the voice came again. “Been waiting for you.”
“Oh? Do we know each other, Mr.—?”
“We don’t.”
She leaned to one side, trying to see past the boots. All she could make out was a tanned, angular face and longish dark hair. “Who are you?”
“Name’s not going to mean anything to you, ma’am.”
“It might. My uncle’s the marshal. I read all the Wanted posters.”
Sage caught a flicker of something in his eyes, but it was gone in an instant.
“Name’s Lawson.”
She inclined her head. “Mr. Lawson.” She pushed the gate open and stepped inside. “What do you want? Besides my roses, that is.” She gestured toward the mare.
“Sign on the fence says Dr. West lives here. That your father?”
“No. My father is the mayor. He lives three miles outside of town. I am Dr. West.”
Her announcement was met with silence.
The man stood up and descended the four steps to her level. He was tall, a good head taller than she was. Lean and oddly graceful. He moved with a disconcerting sureness, and his boots made absolutely no sound. A prickle went up her backbone.
“Dr. West?” His voice had a determined edge to it. He extended his hand.
“Y-yes,” she acknowledged. She waited for more, but he said nothing, just gripped her fingers and held them, waiting. A flame licked where his skin touched hers.
“Mr. Lawson, was there something you wanted?”
He released her hand. “There is, yes. I rode three days to get here.”
“Well, you are here now. What is it that you came for?”
“You.”
Sage stared at the man, noting the hip-hugging faded blue jeans, the travel-stained tan shirt, the red bandanna looped inside the open neck.
“Me?” She tried to keep the alarm from her voice. “Why?”
“You’re the doctor. Leastways, you said you were.”
“Asamatteroffact, Iam the only doctor in town.”
“Only one in the county, it would appear.”
“Oh, no. Dr. McGlothlin has a practice over in Dixon Creek.”
“That’s sixty miles from here. Besides, he’s not available. Gone to visit his sister in Missouri for the month. That leaves you.”
She swallowed in annoyance. “What seems to be the problem, Mr. Lawson?”
“Not my problem, someone else’s. Been shot.” He moved through the gate and gathered up the horse’s reins. “Come on.”
Good Lord, her very first case and it had to be a gunshot wound. Such injuries were often fatal because of sepsis.
“Just where is the patient?” she inquired.
“Three days ride north. You got a saddle horse?”
Three days! “I—no, I don’t have a horse. I’ve only just arrived from the East. I planned to rent a buggy from the livery to make my calls.”
“You’ll need a horse, not a buggy. Mount behind me and we’ll go get you one.”
“I will do no such thing! Just who do you think you are, ordering me about?”
He leveled a look at her that made her cold all over. His eyes were an odd gray-green, and hard, like jade. “I’m a man who needs a doctor.”
“Well, I cannot just traipse off with you. To begin with, it would cause a scandal, and besides, I have duties to attend to, patients….”
He swung into the saddle and gazed down on her without smiling. “I’ll bet you haven’t had a single patient since you hung that brand-new shingle on your fence.”
Speechless, she gaped at him. She would never, never admit that he was correct. In the fourteen days since she had moved into her new house and opened her medical practice, not one person had sought out her services. Not even Ruth Ollesen, who just three nights ago had delivered her third baby with the help of only her mother, Clara Ramsey, and her sister Essie.
“Get your medical bag,” he ordered.
“Now?”
“Now. You can ride double with me, or you can arrange for a horse at the livery. Either way, it’s now.”
“But—are we going… I mean, alone? Just the two of us?”
“Miss West, I suggest that unless you want to lose your first patient, you get moving.”
Sage drew in a breath to the count of five. She couldn’t refuse. She had taken an oath to serve when called upon. It would be far worse to let someone die than risk being the butt of Mrs. Benbow’s busy tongue or Friedrich Stryker’s newspaper editorials.
“What about—?”
“Whatever is on your mind, we’ll talk about it on the trail.”
Chapter Two
Cord stared at the young woman when she marched back out of the house. She could scramble when she wanted to. One minute she was swishing through her front gate looking custard-soft in a ruffled pastel dress, the next she was striding down her porch steps in a newfangled skirt split up the middle, a red-plaid flannel shirt two sizes too big for her, and what looked like brand-new shiny boots. Her hair was hidden under a battered gray Stetson with a godawful purple feather stuck in the band, and she lugged a bulky black leather bag in one hand. Under one arm she’d squashed a thick-looking bedroll and a black rain poncho.
“That all you’re taking?”
“You said five minutes, Mr. Lawson. This is the best I could do in the allotted time. I trust you are taking care of the meals.”
It wasn’t a question, so he didn’t answer it.
She shoved the black bag and the bedroll into his lap, stuck her foot on top of his and swung up behind him. “The livery’s at the other end of town. I’ll want my own mount.”
“That figures,” he breathed. He flapped the reins and the horse stepped forward. “Probably too ladyfied to ride double,” he muttered under his breath.
“Mr. Lawson, I have very acute hearing. I am not too ‘ladyfied’ to do anything that is required.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I will want to select my own horse.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said again.
“There’s the livery. Just past the barbershop. Do you see it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“A spunky little mare, I think. Something with spirit.”
“No, ma’am. You get something slow and sure-footed, like a mule. Trail’s treacherous in places.”
“Oh.” Disappointment sounded in her voice. “I do not like mules. I prefer horses.”
He guided his mare past the barbershop and turned in to a well-kept livery yard. “Mules can carry more.”
“With only five minutes to pack my things, there’s not much that needs carrying.”
“Suit yourself. Just remember I warned you.” He reined in and she slid backward off the horse’s rump. The look on her face made him chuckle. Her wide mouth was pinched, as if she’d bit into a sour lemon, and her blue-violet eyes snapped with indignation. She could hustle when she had to, but she liked having her own way.
Cord made it a point to figure out how a trail companion’s mind worked; it spared arguments and allowed him to keep one jump ahead, no matter what. He’d ridden with some humdingers in the past. He’d learned the hard way what being on the trail could do to an otherwise civilized relationship.
“Arvo,” she called to the stocky older man who strode toward them. “This is Mr. Lawson.”
Cord tipped his hat at the man’s nod.
“Vat I can do for you, Mr. Lawson?”
“Lady needs a horse. One that—”
“One that’s surefooted and steady,” she interrupted. “But not dull, Arvo. There’s nothing I hate worse than riding a horse with no intelligence.” “Sure t’ing, Miss Sage. Maybe Ginger or Light-foot. How far you going?”
“Into the Bear Wilderness area,” Cord answered. He watched the liveryman’s thick eyebrows jump. “Be gone ten, maybe twelve days.”
“Ginger, then. She got better wind for a long trip.” The liveryman gave Cord a thoughtful look. “Miss Sage, does your pa know you’re going up into the wilderness?”
“Not yet, Arvo. I thought maybe you could ride out and tell him. Tell Papa I’ve gone to answer a medical call with Mr. Lawson.”
“Cordell Lawson,” Cord interjected. “The marshal will have heard of me.”
Arvo’s eyebrows jumped again.
“Don’t tell Mama, Arvo. Please. She’ll worry herself into a conniption fit. Just Papa.”
The liveryman disappeared into the stable, reemerging a few moments later leading a shiny roan mare. “I put your old saddle on her, Miss Sage. You t’ink you remember how to ride?”
She laughed. “I’m not likely to forget how, even if it has been six years since I’ve sat a horse. Back in Philadelphia it was the one thing I missed more than Papa’s apple pancakes.”
She busied herself lashing the medical bag and bedroll behind the saddle while Arvo adjusted the stirrups. She was poised to mount when Arvo said, “Vait one minute.” He stepped into the stable again and reemerged with a bulky tan garment in his hand.
“My old riding jacket!” Sage reached for it, buried her nose in the soft sheepskin lining. “Smells like horses!” Her delight made Cord want to laugh.
“I keep it nice for you, for when you come back.” The older man made a step out of his laced fingers, and Sage swung herself up on the mare. Then she leaned down and hugged him. “Thank you, Arvo. Thank you for believing that I would come back. Mama cried and cried, thinking she wouldnever see me again.”
“I allus know you vill come back, Miss Sage. Cal, he said you’d marry some back East man vat talks funny, but I know better.” He tapped his forehead. “I t’ink to myself that daughter of Billy West and your pretty mama never be happy anywhere but here.”
Cord noticed that she waved until she could no longer see the liveryman. It was obvious they were friends. She was known here. Respected. Even loved.
He scanned the length of the main street. Hotel, newspaper office, mercantile, saloon, marshal’s office. Nice little town, the kind where everybody knew everybody else, where kids grew up together and got married and raised kids themselves.
He tried to swallow, but something hard was stuck in his throat.
Before they had traveled three-quarters of a mile, Sage decided she didn’t like him. He set a pace she couldn’t match, and then he leaned back in the saddle and tipped his face into the breeze as if he’d never smelled wild honeysuckle before. As if he’d been starving and here was nourishment in the scent of the air. He stayed that way, looking as if he hadn’t a care in the world, while she pushed her mount to keep up.
She rode well. Her father had put her up on a pony before she was out of pinafores, and when she could jump three flour barrels without losing her seat, he taught her Indian tricks. How to grip with her knees and fire a rifle at a dead run. How to swing sideways out of the saddle and snatch up a hat off the ground.
She sucked her breath in and wished she could stop to rest, just for a minute. When she realized she couldn’t, at least not without losing her guide, she blew the air out and straightened her shoulders. What she needed on this trip was not Indian tricks but stamina. Could she be getting soft at twenty-five?
How could he ride that way, sitting the dark mare in that slouched, lazy manner, one hand resting on his thigh, the other holding the reins so loosely the leather barely moved? She’d laugh if a prairie dog spooked his horse; he’d topple off in one second flat. She kept her eye on him. If it happened, she didn’t want to miss it.
For the next four hours their route followed the west bank of the Umpqua as it looped and curved its way around stands of Douglas fir and house-high piles of granite boulders. She knew the river, loved every inch of its swift-flowing, emerald waters. She’d learned to swim near her uncle John’s place, where the river slowed and widened to lap a sandy beach.
She never liked swimming much. She preferred wading in the shallows, where she could see the stones on the river bottom and knew exactly where to place her feet.
Her mouth felt dry as a dish towel and tasted the same. Would that man never slow down? She was panting for breath, her mouth open; by nightfall her teeth would be black with trail dust.
Nightfall? She eyed the sun, just tipping behind the treetops on the ridge ahead of them. She’d never make it till nightfall.
“Mr. Lawson?” she gasped.
He twisted to look back at her but kept his horse moving.
Oh, the devil with the man! She reined in, brought the mare to a stop and reached for her canteen. She’d downed a single swallow of water when it was wrenched out of her grasp.
“You stop when I stop. Drink when I drink. Someone who’s been shot might not have much time.”
“I am going as fast as I can.” She’d like to fling the contents of the canteen in his face, but she’d be thirsty later if she did. Blast the man. The worst part of it was that he was right—a person with a bullet wound was looking death in the face.
He screwed the cap back on and handed over the container. “Let’s ride.”
Well, of all the… What if she had to urinate? Would he stride back into the bushes and yank up her drawers? The thought was so bizarre she laughed out loud.
He turned in the saddle and pinned her with a questioning look in those hard, gray-green eyes.
“It’s nothing,” she said quickly.
But what if her bladder were ready to burst? What would she have to do to make him stop?
She kneed the horse forward and studied the man’s back. Cordell Lawson wasn’t as easygoing as he appeared. He was driving himself hard and dragging her along with him. Her thighs burned. Her neck hurt from tipping her head against the sun. This was, she realized, a perfect example of mismatched traveling companions. She was human, and he was not.
The trail narrowed and began to climb. Halfway up the steep path she knew she couldn’t make it. Rocks jutted above her, and below, the river glinted silver. If the horse stumbled…
She drew rein and stopped.
Cord heard the horse’s steps cease. What now? He kept on, hoping she would resume her pace, but no sound came from behind him. Clenching his teeth, he turned his mount.
She had halted in the middle of the trail and was sitting there, slumped in the saddle, with that ridiculous feather drooped over her face. But her hands told him all he needed to know. She wore deerskin riding gloves, and while he couldn’t see her knuckles, he knew from the way she gripped the saddle horn that her hands would ache come sundown. Especially if she hadn’t sat a horse in—what had she said?—six years. And they’d been on the trail for a full seven hours. Hell, she wouldn’t be able to sit down for a week.
Of all the doctors in Oregon, why did he have to find her? She was prim and proper and saddle-green. Too slim and willowy to be very strong. And female. Very definitely female—moods and all. Probably enjoyed herself only once a year, at Christmas.
He’d bet she’d never taken a bath in the woods, either. In two days she’d smell like a rotting cabbage. If there was one thing that spoiled the pleasure of the mountains and the sky and the sweet, fresh air it was a partner who smelled bad.
For a long minute he sat still and watched her. Just when he thought maybe he ought to say something, she kicked her mare and it jolted forward.
She moved toward him, still bent over the saddle horn, her head down, not even watching where she was going. Her shoulders were hunched tight with exhaustion.
But she was moving. She had sand; he’d say that for her.
Chapter Three
Cord watched the exhausted woman pry her fingers off the saddle horn and lay the mare’s leather reins in her lap. For the last three hours, as they’d climbed the slope to where the trail leveled off at Frog Jump Butte, she’d hung on by sheer force of will, and her face showed it. Beneath the brim of that sad-looking gray felt hat her eyelids were almost shut.
He let loose an irrepressible snort. No wonder. She was fighting to stay awake, clinging to the hard leather pommel like she’d been glued there.
“Let’s make camp,” he called.
There was no response.
He dismounted and peered through the darkness at her form, still hunched so low in the saddle the purple feather in her hatband brushed the mare’s ear.
“You all right?” he ventured.
After a long silence, a gravelly voice drifted out of the shadows. “Do you always travel like this? Of course I am not all right. I’m half-dead.”
“Travel like what? You’re not half-dead. You can still talk, can’tcha? I hate a woman who exaggerates.”
She straightened, groaned and tried to swing her leg over the horse’s back to dismount. “I know your friend is in need of medical help, but you travel like someone is breathing down your neck.”
She gave up, hefted her bottom over the cantle and slid off the mare backward. When her feet hit the ground, she grasped the animal’s tail to keep from staggering and leaned her forehead against the mare’s hindquarters.
“Maybe someone is,” he said.
She just shook her head and made a small moaning noise.
Goddamn, was she crying? “I’ll build a fire.”
She lifted her head and took a wobbly step. “I would gather some kindling for you, Mr. Lawson, but I don’t think I can bend over. Who would be following you?”
He didn’t answer. Five minutes of scrounging and his arms were full of pinecones and dry branches. He kicked some rocks into a circle and dumped his load. As far as he could tell, she hadn’t moved.
“You can stand up all night if you want, Doc, but I wouldn’t advise it.”
“I will be seated when I am…able. In the meantime, I need to answer a call of nature.” She took another shaky step and grabbed the horse’s tail again.
Cord tossed three broken tree limbs onto his unlit fire and strode toward her. “If you were a man, you could pee right where you’re standing. Seeing as you’re not…”
He grasped her elbows and propelled her ahead of him into the scrub. “See that big huckleberry bush? Use that.”
He released her, and she swayed forward.
“Yes,” she murmured. “Thank you. I can manage now.”
He tramped back to the fire pit while she made rustling sounds in the brush. Out of courtesy he decided not to ignite the kindling until she’d finished. Firelight would illuminate the whole area.
He waited, stalked off into the woods on the other side of camp to do his own business, then squatted beside the fire and waited some more, his flint box poised and ready.
Nothing. Not one leaf rattle or scritch-scratch of twigs came from the direction of the huckleberry bush. An evening songbird started in, stopped, then resumed singing. What in blazes was taking her so long?
“Dr. West?”
There was no answer.
She couldn’t have stumbled off the edge of the butte. Hell’s bells, she couldn’t walk that far. What was she doing?
“Dr. West? Sage?”
To heck with her. He struck a spark and puffed his breath onto the thatch of smoldering pine needles. When it caught, he added more branches, then unloaded his saddlebag.
As he worked laying out his bedroll and the supper things, he listened.
The sparrow twittered on as if it was his last night on earth. A coyote yipped somewhere. But nothing sounded like a female doing her business behind a bush. He began to wonder about that split-up-the-front skirt she wore. Did it unbutton between her legs? Or did she have to pull it down and drop her drawers? Anatomically, women were at a disadvantage.
The songbird stopped abruptly, after which he heard nothing but the occasional spark popping from the fire. What in blazes was going on behind that huckleberry bush? Nobody took half an hour to pee.
“Sage?” He stood up. “Dr. West? I’m coming over.” His boots crunched through the bracken, managing to stop just before he tripped over her.
She lay curled up on her side, her hat squashed into the pine needles. Cord knelt beside her, checked her breathing.
Sound asleep. He suppressed a chuckle. Just one tuckered out, ladyfied lady. He’d bet she’d pulled up her drawers and then just fallen over.
Oh, boy. He’d have to wake her up for supper.
He strode back to camp, untied her bedroll and spread it out by the fire. He mixed up some biscuits, then opened a tin of beans and set it on a flat rock. Over it, close to the heat, he placed the tin pan with six lumps of sticky biscuit dough arranged in a circle, and one in the middle. No fresh water up here, so they’d make do with what was left in the canteens.
And whiskey. His mouth watered at the thought. He wouldn’t get drunk, just smooth out the rough places. It had been a long time since he’d felt this edgy.
She was still asleep when he went to get her. “Doc?” He nudged her shoulder with the toe of his boot. “Wake up. Supper’s ready.”
She groaned and pulled her knees up closer to her chin.
“Doc?” Aw, the devil with it. He went down on one knee, slid his arms under her and stood up. She weighed no more than a sack of sugar. Her long legs swung as he moved, but she didn’t wake up.
He laid her out on her bedroll and she opened her eyes and looked up at him. “Just what do you think you are doing, manhandling my person?”
Man, did she wake up fast! Her voice was clear as a cold creek.
“You fell asleep. I lugged you out of the woods for supper.”
She sat up. “Supper?”
“Beans and biscuits.” And whiskey.
“Oh?” She smiled and her whole face lit up, especially her eyes. In the firelight they looked like the purple pansies Nita used to grow. Big and velvety.
“You haven’t answered my question,” Sage said.
“Huh? What question?”
“Who is following us?”
Cord sent her a sharp look. A more single-minded female he’d never encountered. He thought he’d sidestepped the issue hours ago. “Nobody’s following us,” he said quickly.
“I don’t believe you.”
He leaned back and stared at her. “You know, I had a dog like you once. Used to get his teeth into something and wouldn’t let go.”
“I had a dog like you once, too,” she said with a sideways look. “He used to drop a ham bone at my feet and then bite me if I picked it up.”
Cord sat back on his heels and studied her. High cheekbones. Three or four freckles. A generous mouth, still rosy from sleep. Kind of an English nose. And those eyes. She was pretty, but too smart for her own good.
He switched tactics. “You like venison in your beans?”
“Is your real name Cordell?”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
She gave him a tired smile. “Nothing. I just wanted you to know I could do it, too.”
“Do what, cook?”
“No.” She looked straight into his eyes. “Change subjects when I need to.”
Oh, yeah. Sand and then some.
Sage eyed the pocketknife he slipped out of his jeans. He snapped it open with a flick of his long fingers, and she caught her breath. It looked as sharp as any scalpel she’d ever picked up, and when he pulled a leathery-looking strip of dried jerky from a dingy flour sack and carved off two-bit-size rounds, she began to breathe again. He grinned at her as if he knew what she’d been thinking and dropped them into the tin of bubbling beans.
“Is that knife really clean?” she said without thinking.
“Clean enough,” he responded.
“But we’re going to eat that! What about bacteria? Germs?”
“What about ’em? The heat’ll kill the puny ones, and this—” he dribbled in a healthy splash of whiskey “—will make the survivors happy.”
“I wasn’t thinking about the survivors. I was thinking about the ingesters.” She used the word on purpose.
“We’ll live.”
“And the germs won’t.”
“Life’s like that. Germ eat germ, so to speak. What are you so touchy about, Doc? You’re gettin’ your supper cooked, your toes toasted by the fire I built, everything but tucked in with a bedtime story.”
“I know.” She sighed. “I am grateful, Mr. Lawson. Tomorrow I won’t be so worn-out.”
“Sure you won’t,” he said dryly. “Here. Eat up.” He handed her a fork and a tin plate swimming with hot beans, topped by two over-browned biscuits. She stabbed one with her fork, but it slid sideways. She grabbed it with her fingers and bit into a corner. Or tried to.
“Who in the world taught you how to make biscuits?”
He shoveled a load of beans into his mouth. “Zack Beeler.”
Her fork clattered onto the plate. “The Zack Beeler?”
Cord’s black eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch. “You heard of him?”
“Everyone’s heard of him. He’s an outlaw! A bank robber and a murderer. I saw his poster in my uncle’s office when I was just a girl.”
“He’s also a fine trail cook. He taught me to make biscuits when I was seven.”
Sage stared at Cord. Just what kind of man was he? “Mr. Lawson, what is it you do for a living?”
“I’m a bounty hunter.”
Oh. Oh. “Is the individual who needs a doctor, um…wanted?”
“You could say that.” He dribbled a tablespoon of whiskey over his beans. “In a manner of speaking.”
Speechless, Sage watched him smash up his biscuits with the fork tines and scoop beans over them. An outlaw. She was struggling up this trail to treat someone from the shady side of the law? Someone who might possibly be—in fact, likely was—dangerous?
“Is this person your prisoner?”
“Not exactly. Close enough, though. Can’t move much with a bullet in the back.”
She picked up her fork, then set it down. She had to eat, had to keep up her strength. But suddenly the thought of beans and biscuits lost its appeal.
He cocked his head at her. “Something the matter?”
“Not hungry.”
“Scared, you mean.”
“Don’t put words in my mouth, Mr. Lawson.”
“Better put some beans in it, then. Long day tomorrow. You don’t eat, you won’t be much good.”
She sat back and digested his words, watching his hand move methodically from the plate in his lap to his mouth and back. She could deal with this, couldn’t she? Deal with him? A man she’d known a mere twelve hours? Scramble after him on a barely visible trail into the wilderness to treat Lord only knew who?
She set her plate of food on the ground beside her and tipped sideways until her shoulder met the bedroll, then drew her knees up, wrapped her arms over her stomach and shut her eyes.
His voice came from across the fire pit. “I know it’s tough. Hard riding when you haven’t sat a horse in some years. Steep trail. The river yet to cross.”
Her heart leaped. Cross the river? Would she have to swim?
“Maybe you’re afraid you’re not going to measure up?”
“I’ll measure up, Mr. Lawson.” She licked her lips. “But…would it be all right if I measured up tomorrow?”
The last thing she heard was the clink of tinware and his low chuckle.
Chapter Four
The next morning, Cord lay in his blanket, purposely not moving any part of his body, especially his head. How much had he drunk last night—a third of his stash? Half? He’d lay off when he’d got the doc up the mountain. In the meantime, he’d kill the thing that weighed on him any way he could.
He heard noises around the camp, but his eyes wouldn’t open. “What time is it?”
“Morning,” a female voice said. “Almost.”
He cracked one eyelid. “What are you doing up so damn early?”
“I am ‘measuring up,’ Mr. Lawson.” She waved a pan of fluffy-looking mounds under his nose. “Now these,” she announced with a note of satisfaction, “are biscuits.”
He inhaled and had to agree; they sure smelled like biscuits.
“Get up, and you can have some.”
He drew in another breath and smelled bacon. And coffee. Oh, yes, Lord. Coffee. Measuring up? Hell’s bells, she was saving his life!
He watched her move back to the campfire.
She seemed stiff. He noticed she didn’t bend over, just flexed her knees to reach down. He wondered how she’d managed to poke the coals into a cookfire.
She dipped, straight-backed, and turned over the sizzling bacon strips with a fork. The coffee simmered in the bean tin from last night’s supper.
“I see you found the supplies.”
“And your revolver,” she said in a neutral tone. “And your whiskey. Quite a lot of whiskey, in fact.”
Cord’s breath hissed in. “Didn’t pour it out, did you?” That’s all he needed, a temperance advocate on a cross-country ride.
“Certainly not. Whiskey is an excellent disinfectant.”
He rolled out from under the scratchy, army-issue blanket and stood up. Mistake. He shut his eyes against the pounding in his temples and dropped to his knees. Lord God, he’d done it again.
“Here.” Her voice came from somewhere close by, and the next thing he knew she was folding his fingers around a tin mug. “Drink it,” she ordered. “And don’t vomit.”
His stomach flipped at the word. I won’t. I can’t. Not with her watching. He brought the mug to his nose and inhaled. She might be a prim and proper lady, but she sure could make coffee. He slurped in a mouthful. She measured up just fine.
“Ready for breakfast?”
“No,” he growled.
“Your boots are warming by the fire.”
“Thanks.”
“Your shirt’s airing out on that tree limb.”
“Airing out?”
“It’s filthy,” she said, her voice crisp.
“I’m filthy. Haven’t had a bath since—”
She tsk-tsked. “Inadequate hygiene. We’ll bathe tonight. Assuming we camp near a stream.”
Cord let a long minute pass while he sipped hot coffee and tested his equilibrium.
“And another thing,” she began. “I do not think—”
“Hold it,” he snapped. He lifted his free hand toward her, fingers up. “Hold it right there. You sure as hell are measuring up. Any more and I’ll have to hand over my pants and let you wear ’em.”
“Well, that won’t be necessary I’m sure, Mr. Lawson.” She sounded pleased. “But now that you mention it, since you are wearing your pants, would you mind putting on the rest of your clothes before we eat? I am not used to sharing my meals with a half-dressed gentleman.”
“I don’t much care what you’re used to, Doc. And as for the gentleman part—”
“You needn’t explain,” she said, her voice matter-of-fact. “I am aware.”
Cord stalked over to the fire and stuffed his right foot into his boot. “Ouch! Goldarnit, it’s hot!”
Her eyes widened. “Don’t you wear socks?”
“Did you find any socks when you rustled through my things?” he growled.
“No. But I sleep with mine on, so I naturally thought…”
Cord glared at her. “Well, I sleep with mine off. In fact, I never wear socks. Or drawers, so don’t yank my pants off cuz you think they need ‘airing.’”
“Which they do,” she offered. There was a hint of laughter in her voice, but he was too mad—and too hungry, he realized—to care.
“My pants,” he said with as much dignity as he could muster, “don’t get washed until they need it, and that’s not until they can stand up by themselves.”
“Well, then. If the knees will still bend, perhaps you would like to sit down and eat some breakfast.”
It wasn’t a question, more like a softly spoken order, but the grumbling of his stomach made a response irrelevant. Jupiter, could she get under his skin! He noticed that she ate standing up.
The crisp bacon broke up in his mouth like little shards of sweet-flavored cookies, and the biscuits! Fluffy white tumbleweeds that melted on his tongue. He swallowed and nearly groaned with pleasure. “Who taught you to cook?”
“Billy West. He’s my father.”
Cord stopped chewing. “I don’t know who my father is. Could have been any one of four men, all of ’em outlaws.”
“Outlaws?”
“Only family I ever knew. My mother died having me. They fed me and clothed me until I was fifteen.”
“And then?”
His face changed. “And then I turned them in. They’d killed a Chinese woman and her baby.”
Sage opened her mouth to speak, then thought better of it. What brutes men could be. Some men, anyway. Her father and Uncle John were both wonderful men, strong and smart and gentle inside, where it counted.
She glanced at the man seated on the other side of the fire. What about him? A brute? Or a gentle man?
A dark whisker shadow lay over the lower half of his face. His skin was tanned the color of her leather saddle, his chest and back, as well. And he wore no drawers.
An irrational thought flicked through her mind. Could a man’s backside get suntanned right through his jeans?
He was a brute, she decided. A man who chased other men for money. A bounty hunter who would turn in his own father for a price. Hardheaded and hard-hearted.
Then why did he want to save his prisoner’s life?
She could feel him staring at her, asking a silent question. It took all her courage to meet his gaze. His eyes were hard. Calculating. And unusual. The gray-green irises were ringed with brown, as if they had started to be one color in utero and then changed to another before birth.
There was something undisciplined about him. Primitive, like a wild animal. A wolf—that was it. A hungry wolf. One who hunted alone.
She dropped her gaze to the tin plate in her hand. That fact didn’t exactly make him unacceptable. It made him dangerous.
* * *
Three switchbacks down Frog Jump Butte it started to rain. The cold, stinging droplets dampened the trail, then turned it into mud. The horses twitched their tails and stepped daintily along the precipitous cliff edge while Sage’s heart thumped.
She’d packed into the woods before with her father and Uncle John, but if it rained, the three of them would hole up in a cave or a tree hollow and wait it out. Camping trips when she was a girl had been for fun.
Now she was “all growed up” as her father put it, and it wasn’t fun. Not with rainwater sluicing off her hat and a sopping wet riding skirt clinging to her legs. The brown denim material made a swish-slap sound with every step the horse took.
As the morning wore on, the sky grew darker. Rain dribbled in rivulets off the toes of her boots, splashed onto the ground and made the already sodden trail even more slippery. She reached one gloved hand to pat the mare’s neck. “Good girl,” she murmured. “We will soldier on.”
Sage had picked up the phrase from her father, had used it at medical college when things had seemed insurmountable—dissecting her first cadaver under the eagle eye of three professors ready to pounce on a false move; fending off the rude, hurtful jests by her male colleagues when a patient happened to be female; even forcing herself to eat when she was so tired just opening her mouth took more energy than she could muster.
She had soldiered on. Hour by hour, day by day. More than her examinations and flawless oral presentations, her medical degree had come through dogged perseverance.
A little thing like rain might be cold and wet and uncomfortable, but it wouldn’t stop her.
But the river, when they reached it, did. It rippled deep green and turquoise around a cluster of water-smoothed gray boulders and a half-sub-merged fir stump.
“Why,” she said to the man who drew rein at her side, “did we climb up that butte yesterday only to unclimb it today? Why not just go around it?”
He studied the riverbank, the waterlogged tree, then the opposite bank. “Because you can see the whole valley from up there.”
“And be seen, as well.”
He hesitated. “True.”
He dismounted and shucked off his poncho. “River won’t be this smooth for long. It’ll rise with the creek runoff.” He began to unbutton his shirt.
“What are you doing?”
“Going swimming.” He pulled off his boots, rolled them up inside his shirt and poncho and tied them behind the saddle. Raindrops rolled down his bare chest and back.
“Now? In the rain?”
He flashed her a grin. “If you’ve never gone swimming in the rain, you ought to try it. Rain makes the water seem warm, feels good against your skin. Like silk.”
He slapped the mare’s rump. “Come on, Sugar.” When the horse jolted forward, he splashed into the river alongside her.
Sage watched his half-clothed body slice through the water. Halfway across he rolled onto his back, stretched both arms wide and opened his mouth wide to the rain. “Goddamn, this feels good,” he called. “Care to join me?”
She sat frozen on her horse. “What on earth for?” she shouted.
“For pleasure, pure and simple.” She thought she heard a low laugh, but she wasn’t sure.
“It’s one good way to get across the river,” he added in a lazy voice. “Besides, my trousers are getting washed at the same time.”
Oh, God, the river. She had to cross it, too.
She couldn’t swim fully clothed. She’d have to take off her rain gear, then her shirt, her riding skirt. Her boots. She could strip down to her camisole and underdrawers, but he would be watching and…
Does it really feel like silk?
In her entire life, she had never done anything just for pleasure alone. She’d gone camping to learn about medicinal herbs and roots. She’d even kissed a boy once, but only because someone dared her to, and she never backed away from a challenge.
But just to feel…silky? It seemed indecent, somehow. Decadent.
This was crazy. He was crazy.
And yet…
Chapter Five
Cord lay spread-eagled in the water, sculling his cupped hands to keep from drifting downstream. He let the raindrops beat on his face and chest as he watched her horse dance back and forth on the sandy riverbank while its rider tried to make up her mind about something. To swim across or ride across, he guessed. Not a big decision; the water was only four, maybe five feet deep.
Swimming in the rain is a real sensual pleasure, Doc. So why not swim across and enjoy the experience? Lord knew there weren’t that many real pleasures in this world. When one dropped into your lap, you ought to savor it.
She stepped her mount to the river’s edge, studied the wavelets lapping at the mare’s hooves, then reined the animal away.
What is she waiting for? The rain had already drenched her; she looked sodden and miserable, with her head down, her shoulders hunched. She was probably shivering so hard her teeth chattered. Wet is wet, Doc. Choose the way that feels good.
“Can you swim?” he yelled.
“Yes, I can.”
“Well, come on, then.”
“I am not familiar with this part of the river. I…don’t know if it’s safe.”
Safe? “Hell, Doc, I’m out here in the middle of it. Doesn’t that tell you something?”
“I am not you, Mr. Lawson. I like to know what is, well, what is beneath the surface before I plunge into something.”
“Can’t always know that.”
“I am r-realizing th-that.”
Jehoshaphat, she was so cold she was starting to stutter. “Take a chance, dammit!”
Once more she turned the horse away from the river.
Snakes and sawdust! Maybe she just plain didn’t know how to enjoy herself.
But when she turned back, her hand was at her throat, unbuttoning her black rain poncho. Then her red plaid shirt. She dismounted and fumbled at the waistband of her skirt, then stepped out of it and shucked off her boots. Standing there in nothing but her white drawers and a lacy camisole, she looked like a butterfly whose cocoon had just been peeled away.
Cord sucked in a breath. You see a woman naked and it changes things. He stopped sculling and let the water close over his head. When he surfaced, she was rolling up her clothes and boots in the poncho. She stashed the bundle behind the saddle, hooked the reins around the pommel and waded into the water. The mare followed at a respectful distance.
Cord wasn’t watching the mare. The thin, wet fabric of her underclothes plastered itself to her knees, her thighs. She moved slowly, very slowly, using her arms for balance and testing each step tentatively before she put down her weight. Her body broke the smooth surface with scarcely a ripple. Up to her waist now. Higher, higher…
Oh, hell yes! Under the wet camisole her breasts showed clearly, like mounds of some perfectly formed fruit with a dark aureola marking each center. Oh, God, she was beautiful. He couldn’t look away.
Then with a splash she was swimming, clean, sharp strokes that cut the water with no noise. A man had taught her, he could see that. Her father, or her uncle, the marshal. At least Cord hoped so. All at once he couldn’t stand the thought of another male’s hands touching her.
She swam to within a foot of where he lay and, without slowing, glided on past. Her eyes, he noted, were scrunched shut. He rolled onto his stomach and stroked after her.
She reached the sandy beach ahead of him and waded out of the water, her backside gleaming wetly under the clinging muslin. Cord’s arms stopped working and he stifled the groan that rose from his belly, a growl of pure male hunger.
And then his sex rose and grew hard.
She caught the mare’s bridle as it clambered up the bank, then turned and stood waiting for him, her face composed.
Cord swam into the shallows, but his member was so engorged he didn’t dare stand up. Instead, he folded his knees and huddled on the sandy river bottom. He’d have to play for time.
“Enjoy your swim?”
“Yes, I did.” She gave him a tentative smile. “I swam all the way across,” she said unnecessarily. She beamed like a kid watching a parade, as if she was proud of herself.
What was it she’d said? I like to know what’s beneath the surface before I plunge into something. She’d been scared of the river. Scared of the unknown. Well, I’ll be damned.
Now what?
He waited, up to his neck in the river.
She waited on the bank.
His knees were getting cold. “Want to turn your back while I get out?”
Her eyes flickered. “I’m a doctor, Mr. Lawson. There is nothing about the male body I haven’t seen before.”
Maybe. Had she ever seen an erection that tented a man’s trousers even when they were soaking wet? He didn’t think cadavers or ailing male patients could…
“Oh, very well,” she said at last. “Since you are shy.”
“Shy!” He swooshed to a standing position just in time to see her backside disappear into a gooseberry thicket.
Shy! He glanced down at the front of his jeans. “Sure, Doc. If you say so.” He had a hard time keeping a straight face.
To take his mind off the matter, he gathered a handful of pale green gooseberries and fed them to his horse. Slowly.
“Ready to ride?” he called when he thought he was under control.
“Quite ready.” She emerged from the thicket fully dressed, her red shirt buttoned up to her chin, her skirt flaring over her boots. Hell, she looked ready for church.
And here he stood, like a randy cowboy with a hard-on.
The downpour ceased abruptly, as if someone had suddenly turned off a spigot. She glanced skyward, stuck out her hand, palm up. “Oh, look, the rain has stopped. Now my undergarments will dry.”
Blazes, she didn’t even notice the bulge in his pants! He’d guess she wouldn’t understand it if she did see it. He rolled his eyes.
She mounted her horse and turned its rump toward him. Clipped to the saddle blanket with four wooden clothespins were her drawers and the lacy camisole.
Cord thought about that as he sloshed out of the river and caught his own mare. Underclothes flapping on the back of her horse. It would be hard not to look at them.
Okey-doke. Then he wouldn’t look.
He swung up into the saddle. Water squished out of his wet jeans, coursed down the animal’s hide and dripped off the stirrups. Every move he made reminded him he was sodden as a drowning rat.
And hard.
He’d keep his eyes on that funny-looking skirt she wore, and that plaid shirt she’d buttoned up tight like a prissy schoolmarm. He wouldn’t think for one second about the fact that she wore absolutely nothing underneath…
Lord-oh-Lord. It was going to be a long, long day.
She rode behind him, had done so ever since they left the Umpqua River three hours ago and headed east cross-country toward the Green Mountains, but it didn’t help. He kept thinking about her backside.
He tried reciting multiplication tables in his head. When he completed the twelves, he tried poetry. “This is the forest primeval…”
No good. His now-dry jeans rubbed his flesh the wrong way.
He’d try conversation, he decided. Anything to keep his thoughts from wandering where they had no business going. He twisted in the saddle and spoke over his shoulder. “How come you swim with your eyes closed?”
No answer. After a good dozen heartbeats, her voice floated to him. “Because it scares me.”
“But you did it. You looked pretty pleased with yourself after you got across.”
“I was pleased. Swimming across that river is a milestone for me.”
He chuckled. “Like Caesar crossing the Rubicon.”
She made a noise somewhere between a cough and a chortle. “How would you know about the Rubicon?”
“I read about it.”
“In Latin, I suppose.” Her tone indicated disbelief.
“Yeah. Zack Beeler taught me. His mama was a schoolteacher back in Rhode Island. Zack knew more about Latin than making biscuits.”
She didn’t respond.
“You don’t believe me?”
“Let’s just say I am…skeptical.”
“Try me.”
“All right, if you insist. Caveat viator.”
“Let the traveler beware,” he translated instantly. “Carpe diem,” he tossed back.
“Seize the day,” she said in a triumphant voice. “So there!” He could tell she was smiling. He wished he could see her face; it lit up when she smiled.
He decided to push his advantage. “Quamminimum credulapostero?”
“Trust…um, trust…”
“Trust tomorrow as little as possible,” he finished for her. “I rest my case.”
A long, long silence followed. Cord concentrated on the faint trail ahead of him, noted the angle of the sun, the various shades of green in the wooded area to his right. Pretty country. No settlers. Not even a stage stop out here in the middle of nowhere. It suited him just fine.
When he was tracking someone, he rode through towns, talked to ranchers, stopped at army posts and Indian camps. After a capture he preferred to be alone. Raised by four men on the run, he’d never been comfortable around civilized people. The first Latin word he ever learned was solus. Solitary.
Ah, what the hell. People were no damn good anyway.
Except for her, maybe. Most folks pointed fingers, spat out insults, drew sidearms on a fellow for no cause but suspicion or being “different.”
She was an exception. She had the gumption to ride with him, and that said quite a lot about her. She was dedicated to her profession.
She was…
Don’t think about it, Cord. Don’t think about those underclothes, either. Dry by now. Hanging out in plain sight getting bleached by the sun. Probably warm to the touch. She’d slide those drawers up her legs, over her thighs, around her—
“Seven times seven is forty-nine,” he said aloud. “‘The murmuring pines and the hemlocks…’”
Forget Longfellow. “‘I knew a maiden, fair to see…’” He swallowed and dredged up some more Latin from his memory. “Sic transit gloria mundi.”
Oh, yeah? The glory of the world wasn’t passing; it was riding not twenty paces behind him.
“Seven times eight…”
Sage heard him muttering ahead of her, a low rumble that rose and fell like the humming of bees. She couldn’t hear distinct words, but maybe that was just as well. What would a man like Cord Lawson, a bounty hunter who spoke Latin of all things, have on his mind?
As she thought about it, the niggle of interest turned into a nagging curiosity. She had always hungered to know what lay beneath the surface of things that were more complex than met the eye; it didn’t matter if it was a swollen area of skin on the chest or stomach of a patient, a river, even a whiskery man who swam the dirt out of his laundry. She’d like to peel him open and peer inside.
She watched his bare back moving with the horse. He must ride shirtless more often than not, she decided. His skin was smooth and very, very tan, so dark it resembled the rich mahogany of her mother’s piano. His ear-length black hair had dried in the breeze, and now the ends wanted to curl up. It made him seem young. Even looking into a mirror he wouldn’t see how boyish and untamed those little uncorraled strands appeared.
She liked that. It was as if she could see part of him that he himself didn’t know existed.
She studied his shoulders, tried to estimate their breadth, then let her gaze drift down his spine to where the subtly moving bones of his back disappeared under the leather belt at his waist. There wasn’t an ounce of extra fat on him. Extra anything, really; his torso looked as if it was carved out of dark clay and rubbed smooth with knowing hands.
An odd feeling lodged in her lower belly, as if she had gulped hot chocolate on a winter afternoon. The rich, warm sensation came as a surprise, and she felt it again when he turned to look at her.
“I figure another three hours till we make camp.” He squinted against the sun behind her, reached up one hand, pulled his black hat down to his eyebrows. Beneath the tilted brim, his green-gray eyes narrowed.
He was waiting for something, but what? She hadn’t requested a necessary stop, or even time to rinse her dry mouth with a bit of water from the canteen. She hadn’t slowed him down in the slightest. And after her inquiries about her patient—the location of the wound, the presence of fever and a dozen other questions he had simply sidestepped—she had given up. She prayed that the wounded man would still be alive when they reached him.
She had been an ideal traveling companion, pushing as fast as she could, never complaining. So why was he looking at her like that?
“You all right, Doc?” he called back to her.
“Yes, of course. Why do you ask?”
“Mighty quiet.”
“I am…thinking.”
He grinned suddenly. “You know, I’ve about got you figured out.” He turned back to scan the trail ahead. The Bear Wilderness area loomed before them, a thick tangle of Douglas fir and spruce that swathed the hills in various shades of brown and green.
Sage stifled the laugh that bubbled up in her throat. “Nobody has figured me out, Mr. Lawson. Not my father, not my mother. Mama and Papa let me go to medical college because they were afraid I would run away if they didn’t. But they didn’t understand.”
Now that her medical studies were concluded, the one thing she missed was being kept busy. Too busy to dwell on why she sometimes felt restless, as if her skin had shrunk overnight. She liked probing the mysteries of diphtheria and puerperal fever, liked finding out what was true and what was old wives’ tales or just superstition.
But what was beneath her own surface was a mystery she didn’t want to poke into.
“And just what have you figured out?” The words leaped out of her mouth before she could catch them.
He twisted to face her again. “You sure you want to know?”
“Of course. Though I doubt very much your observations will prove insightful.”
“Well, you’re not gonna like this, but here goes.” He looked straight into her eyes. “You’re all locked up inside. Afraid to feel things.”
“I most certainly am not! Whatever gave you such a ridiculous idea?”
He held her gaze without smiling. “The fact that you swim with your eyes closed. Like you don’t want to…I don’t know, let yourself go and enjoy it, maybe.”
“That is presumptuous, Mr. Lawson.” To give herself something to do, she flapped the reins, then realized every step the mare took brought her closer to him.
“You can call me Cord, Doc. You’ve seen me half-dressed, and I’ve seen you, well, vice versa. I think maybe we’ve been introduced good enough.”
“Mr. Lawson!”
He didn’t even blink. “You’re right about the ‘presumptuous’ part, though.” Again, he twisted to scan the trail ahead. “I don’t have a lot of fine manners to trip over,” he called over his shoulder.
“You are certainly correct on that score,” Sage murmured.
“So,” he continued, “I just say what I think. I’m not wrong very often.”
Sage took her time about answering. She drew in a long breath, expelled it, drew in another. “You are wrong this time, Mr. Lawson.”
“Cord,” he reminded her. “You know, I’ve only seen you smile three times in two days, Doc. Once was when you swam the river. The point is, you were a little scared, but it felt good, didn’t it?”
She swallowed instead of replying. Her father had taught her it was bad manners to argue on the trail, but she was so mad she felt like heaving the canteen at him. Tears stung her eyes. She straightened her shoulders.
“Well, Cord, I am not smiling now.”
“You think about it, Doc. I know you’re riding with me to do good for your fellow man. Might be this journey could do you some good, too.” He moved forward at a faster pace and this time did not look back.
Sage reached behind the saddle and grabbed the first thing her fingertips encountered. Her camisole. She didn’t alter her pace, didn’t make a sound. But that old feeling of restless hunger was back, flooding her entire being until she wished she could just jump out of her skin and escape.
She used the garment to dab at her eyes until they reached a grassy clearing. When Cord called a halt, she wadded up the muslin and stuffed it under her saddle.
Chapter Six
The trail wound up through the timber, then reached a lush green meadow fed by a gurgling stream. The doctor kicked her horse into a canter and caught up with Cord.
He didn’t want her any closer. He resisted an urge to dig in his spurs and gallop away from her, but he guessed she’d eaten enough of his dust for one day. The wind was picking up, so it was even worse now.
For the next quarter mile they rode side by side through the camas and meadow rue without saying a word. The quiet didn’t seem to bother her, but it got under Cord’s skin in a hurry. Not as much as those undergarments, fluttering from the back of her saddle in the warm afternoon wind, but enough that his already parched tongue felt like a dried corncob. He couldn’t wait until it got dark and they made camp. He’d take a couple of pulls at the whiskey flask, roll himself up in his blanket and forget how raw and hungry his nerves felt. Another hour until sundown. He had to hold it together until then.
He glanced at the sky, then at the thick forest of maples and blue spruce covering the mountains ahead. The wind lashed the branches and the sighing sound set his teeth on edge.
Her voice at his side jolted him. “Tell me something, Mr. Lawson?”
“Depends what you want to know.” He knew his reply sounded surly, but some instinct told him to duck and run, not answer questions. She was full of questions.
“I want to know who you were chasing. Before you needed a physician’s services, I mean.”
“I don’t think you do.”
Her eyes blazed like two purple amethysts. “Don’t tell me what I want! I hate it when someone thinks for me.”
“I still don’t figure you want to know.”
“But I’m interested! I’ve always been curious about things I don’t know.”
“That why you chose to be a doctor?”
“Well, yes, as a matter of fact. My baby brother di ed of diphtheria when I was ten. The day we buried him I decided I wanted to know why he died. I wanted to know what a doctor would have done to save him.”
Cord’s gut tightened. “Some things in life you can’t control.”
“It is ignorance that leaves one vulnerable. At least that is what I fervently believe.”
He snapped his jaw shut and counted to ten. “You’re one of those goddamned ‘truth will make you free’ types, is that it? You think if you dig up enough facts, you can just take charge of the outcome. Choose hell or happiness. Life or death.”
“Of course, within reason. Things you know are the means to understanding life. It follows that if one understands, one can correct what is wrong. Illness, for instance.”
“Let me tell you something, Doc. Real life is mostly about feelings, not facts. Feeling hungry. Feeling tired. Feeling the sun on your back. Feeling good, or…feeling like you want to die.”
She sniffed. “That is an extremely limited philosophy.”
“Maybe. In the long run, it’s the only one that matters.”
“Oh?” Her eyes bored into his like two blue bullets. The wind lifted her hat brim, and she jerked it down tight. “And just what exactly makes you so sure of that?”
“Managing to stay alive for thirty-seven years.”
“But…what have you done with those years?”
“Laughed some. Cried some. Mostly tried to enjoy them.” He didn’t think she really wanted to know about the black times.
“Is that all?”
“That’s all. How old are you, Doc?”
“Um, well, I’m—” She drilled him with those eyes again. “That is a distinctly personal question, Mr. Lawson.”
“Yeah. But I’ve seen you with half your duds off, so you want me to guess?”
“I will be twenty-six in December,” she said quickly.
“And what have you done with your years?”
She straightened her spine just enough to make him smile. “I have used them to investigate. To understand about life. I have studied. Learned.”
“Have you enjoyed yourself?” He wanted to add something about sensual pleasure, but one glance at her tightened mouth and he thought better of it.
“Reasonably, yes. I have a purpose in life. An honorable calling. I am…content.”
He snorted. “Content! You don’t understand jack squat about life, Doc.”
“I do, too! I understand a great deal about living a worthwhile life. You are a footloose thirty-sevenyear-old drifter who doesn’t belong anywhere. It is you who doesn’t understand about life.”
He gritted his teeth. “You think so, do you?”
“I think so, yes. I know so.”
“Well, you’re dead wrong, Doc.” She was a prissy, stuck-up female with a brain too big for her britches. He clenched his jaw even tighter. “And if the opportunity presents itself, I’ll show you what I mean.”
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