Cherished (14 page)

Cole stood relaxed and calm, yet his gaze
never wavered from Cash Hogan’s face. “I’d sooner eat a skunk than
sit down to a drink with you and your pards, Hogan,” he remarked
conversationally. “And I’m sure as hell not going to turn over my
two thousand dollars to you. Ride out now while you still can and
save the folks of Cedar Gulch the trouble of burying you.”

Juliana saw the change flood over the three
bounty hunters’ faces. The fear was still there, etched deep
beneath the blustering facade, but now the men had been goaded and
lashed into anger by Rawdon’s scornful words and arrogant
dismissal. Luke’s lips thinned and his eyes glittered in the sun,
Bo’s thick shoulders hunched, and Cash seemed to turn to stone,
every sinewy muscle tightening, readying, his thin face twisting
into an expression of snarling, frozen fury.

“There’s three of us, Rawdon, and only one of
you,” Cash hissed. “Reckon you’re the one goin’ to need
buryin’.”

Everything happened at once. Rawdon shoved
Juliana into the dirt with such force that her hands, face, and
knees were scraped raw in the gritty dust. She lay stunned, red
sparks of light exploding in her head while deafening gunfire
thundered above her. She covered her ears with her hands,
screaming. Acrid gunsmoke clogged her nostrils as the air
reverberated with gunshots. It seemed like an eternity before they
ceased, and when they did there came a stark silence. Floating on
this stillness, Juliana heard the groans of a dying man.

A tremor shook her. For a moment she couldn’t
move, then she forced herself to lift her head, forced her body to
inch upward. Every muscle cried out in pain. Blood oozed on her
cheek.

There was silence all around her now. Eerie,
absolute silence. Juliana somehow managed to crawl to her knees,
and she blinked against the glare of the sun.

No more than six feet from her, three men
sprawled motionless in a crimson pool of blood.

“Oh, my God,” she choked. She shut her eyes
against the grisly vision. With an effort of will she fought the
nausea that welled up in her throat and threatened to overtake
her.

Cash, Bo and Luke were all dead, bloodied
bits of sinew and bone and flesh spattered all about them. Juliana
trembled, her body a mass of jelly. She flung herself away from the
ghastly pile of bodies and willed her eyes to open once more. A
shadow loomed over her.

She gazed dazedly up, up at the man who
towered above her. The tall, black-garbed man, the one they called
Rawdon, who held a smoking Colt .45 in each hand.

Slowly, as Juliana watched in sick terror, he
replaced the guns in their holsters. Expressionless, he bent toward
her.

“No,” she breathed in a wisp of a voice.

He seized her arm and hauled her to her feet.
“You’re not going to faint on me again, are you?” he demanded.

Juliana could only gape at him in stunned
fear.

He studied her. The sun glittered down. No
sign of life came from anywhere in Cedar Gulch.

So this was the horse thief, Juliana
Montgomery, the one he’d been tracking for the past two weeks. It
was unbelievable, Cole mused—or maybe not. He sure hadn’t figured
her for a thief that day in Denver, with her fancy dress and plumed
hat, with those big, bright green eyes of hers that he hadn’t been
able to forget. Even when he’d read the description on the Wanted
poster, it hadn’t occurred to him that the blond-haired thief was
the same girl who’d fainted on him outside the Gold Dust last
April. Yet remembering another girl long ago, one with
almond-shaped brown eyes and thick ebony hair that felt like silk
in his hands, he swiftly reminded himself that nothing a woman did
should surprise him. Women could be every bit as greedy and
dishonest as men, without a clue of it showing on the outside—and
he had the scars to prove it. So this one, innocent and weak as she
looked, would bear watching. Cole tried to ignore the fascinating
beauty of her delicate features, which, combined with the curvy
softness of her body, proved a delectable combination. He stared at
her, exerting all his will to see not a fragile golden-haired waif
of a girl but a criminal worth two thousand dollars cash when he
brought her in. It wasn’t easy.

When he moved his hand up to her face, the
girl flinched, but he only traced the dirty scrape across her cheek
lightly with his thumb. “I didn’t mean to push you so hard.” His
tone was curt. “Still,” he said, grasping her wrist once more,
“you’d have gotten a lot worse from them.” Instinctively, she
followed the direction of his gaze to the dead men in their pool of
blood, and this time her knees buckled.

“Oh, no, you don’t.” He steadied her, and
shook his head in exasperation. “C’mon, let’s get out of here.
We’ve got a ways to go before dark.”

“G-go? Where?”

“Colorado.”

Juliana froze as panic flooded back. The
first shock of the shootings was draining away and she was left
with the reality of her own situation. She couldn’t go back to
Denver and the fury of John Breen—he would throw her in jail or ...
who knew what he would do now that she had humiliated him? Dread
clawed at her, giving her strength to wrench free of Cole
Rawdon.

“You can’t take me back there,” she cried,
lifting a desperate face to him. “You can’t! Listen to me, please,
there’s been a mistake. I’m not a thief!”

“Sure you’re not. And I’m not a bounty
hunter. I’m the President of the United States. C’mon.”

He grabbed her arm again, but Juliana tried
to pry his fingers away. “There’s been a terrible mistake, you must
listen to me ...”

But he wasn’t interested. He held her easily,
and scanned the sky and horizon with steady, searching eyes all the
while that she babbled on, then he seemed to make up his mind about
something and started directing her toward the stables at the far
end of the street where a pinto horse was tethered to a hitching
post.

Juliana gave a shriek of pain and
stumbled.

“What is it now?” he growled, but she was
leaning over to touch her ankle, her face a portrait of agony.

“My ... ankle,” Juliana gasped. “I must have
twisted it when you pushed me ...”

He lowered her to the ground and knelt beside
her. When he touched her foot, she cried out. “Oh, it must be
broken.” Juliana bit back a sob. “It hurts quite terribly ...”

“Damn.”

Rawdon looked about. At last the citizens of
Cedar Gulch were starting to emerge from their burrows to see the
results of the gunfight. Several men drifted around the corner of
the main street and peered toward the bodies. Rawdon stood up.

“I’ll find out if there’s a doctor in this
hellhole. Don’t try to move it in the meantime.”

“I won’t.” Juliana’s voice was fraught with
pain. Frowning, Cole moved off toward the cluster of men. What the
hell was he going to do if she had a broken foot? It would slow
things down considerably, but he couldn’t just drag her off without
letting a doctor set it, or bandage it, could he? He’d never had a
woman prisoner before and he didn’t intend to treat her any
different from a man, except ... except she seemed to be in a lot
of pain, and he figured he’d best get that foot seen to before they
started out. It could be a rough trip back to Denver, Cole knew.
Every bounty hunter for two hundred miles around would be after
that reward. Cole’s eyes narrowed at the thought. He wasn’t about
to lose that money. It just might be enough to help him outbid
McCray. Fire Mesa actually could be his again, he thought with a
little flicker of hope, it could come back into Rawdon hands,
thanks to Miss Juliana Montgomery. But he’d have to push her hard
and fast across rough terrain to get back to Wells with the money
in time. He hoped she could endure the ride ahead. She looked to be
a weak, fragile thing, and she certainly had no stomach for
bloodshed. Chances were she’d see more of it before this was over.
Part of Cole almost felt sorry for her. Almost. He reminded himself
that she was an outlaw, and that he’d better treat her like one.
And he would, he vowed, once he got that foot of hers taken care
of.

Juliana, in the meantime, watched him walk
away from her with a frantically beating heart. She had fooled him.
She had done it. She couldn’t believe that he had fallen for her
trick, but then, he probably thought her a perfect idiot anyway.
Why wouldn’t he believe that she’d have been clumsy enough to have
broken her foot? Now, if she could only go through with the rest of
it ... She could scarcely believe what she was about to do next,
but she had no choice. She looked at Cole Rawdon, walking in one
direction, his back to her, and then swiveled her head to study the
pinto tethered no more than twenty feet away in the other
direction. She took a breath, readied herself. Not yet, not quite
yet. Rawdon reached the group of men at the end of the street and
started to speak to them. Now, she told herself, summoning her
courage.
Now
.

Juliana thrust herself to her feet and ran.
Her heart in her throat, she plummeted straight toward that pinto,
trying to make as little sound as she could in the dusty road.
Above her, a turquoise sky blazed, but below it was gray and quiet,
too quiet, she thought, as her own footsteps drummed in her ears
and the beating of her heart seemed like an explosion. She heard a
yell as she grabbed the tether, and the next instant she had a foot
in the stirrup.

Somehow she vaulted into the saddle, her
skirts askew, and grabbed up the reins.

Cole Rawdon was sprinting toward her, his
face black with fury. He went for his gun.

“Giddyap!” she screamed, and dug her heels
into the pinto’s flanks. They were off like a bolt of lightning,
racing away from Rawdon, away from Cedar Gulch. A shot blasted to
the right of her, but Juliana never flinched. Cole Rawdon wouldn’t
kill her. The poster had clearly stated that she was to be brought
back alive. She laughed almost hysterically to herself as she bent
over the horse’s mane and urged him on faster. Cole Rawdon was
trying to frighten her. He expected her to give up. Well, she
wouldn’t give up. She had a horse now, and, glancing down at the
thick saddlebag tied on behind, realized she had supplies as well.
There would be a canteen, maybe even food. Whoever this horse
belonged to had been prepared for traveling. She owed its owner,
whoever he was, a big debt of gratitude.

Suddenly the laughter died out of her throat.
As the pinto swept over a rise that led into a high stretch of pine
forest, it dawned on her that there was only one person to whom
this horse could belong. There had been no one else about.

She gulped at the enormity of what she had
done.

She had tricked Cole Rawdon and escaped from
him. She had made him look a fool before the men of Cedar Gulch.
And despite all her protestations that she wasn’t a thief ...

She had stolen his horse.

Night was coming, and with it a storm. Her
tracks would be washed away if he didn’t find her before then—but
he would, Cole vowed to himself. Come hell or high water, he
would.

Anger flicked through him every time he
thought of how he’d been tricked. Treacherous little bitch. She’d
made a damned fool of him in front of the entire town. Riding Cash
Hogan’s bay through the pine forests above the Rim, he inspected
every branch and twig, every print in the earth, reading the
evidence of her passing like a clearly marked map. She hadn’t had
much of a start, just enough to keep ahead of him for a while. He’d
let her think she was safe, that she’d given him the slip. When she
least expected it, he’d take her. Rawdon smiled grimly at the
thought.

He hadn’t been smiling when he’d grabbed
Cash’s horse back in town and set out after her, all the while
trying to ignore the expressions of the men in Cedar Gulch. Not one
of them had dared say a word to him about being outwitted by a
woman, or had had the nerve to laugh out loud, but he knew they’d
wanted to. They had probably burst out with it when he’d gone. And
that bartender, Kelly, damn his eyes. He’d grinned when he saw the
girl ride away.

“The luck of the Irish, that’s what that
lassie has—aye, that’s what I think,” Kelly had remarked to no one
in particular as Rawdon had swung himself onto the bay in front of
the Red Snake Saloon.

The man had kept grinning, even when Cole,
rigid in the saddle, had gritted his teeth.

“We’ll see how lucky she is when I’m done
with her,” he had bitten off, and then he’d ridden out without
waiting for the bartender’s reaction. Kelly might be in sympathy
with the girl, but that wouldn’t do her one damn bit of good once
Cole found her. When he got his hands on her ... Cole’s muscles
tensed in anticipation. Nothing would help her then.

Any ideas he’d had of showing Juliana
Montgomery mercy on the way back had vanished like night mist at
morning light. She didn’t deserve mercy. Hell, she didn’t deserve
anything but to have her pretty little neck wrung. He’d never lost
a prisoner before, not once in all these years, not until she had
come along.

That’s what you get for going soft
,
Cole told himself.
Because she’s a woman, you let your guard
down. You’re just damned lucky she didn’t blow your head
off.

“I’m not a thief. There’s been a mistake.”
How damned convincingly she had spoken those words. So now he knew
something about her, besides the fact that she was guilty as hell.
Lies came easily to Juliana Montgomery. She could stare a man in
the face and look as soft and innocent as a woman could look, and
lie through her teeth. Well, he hoped she would enjoy this brief
fling of freedom because it was the last she would know for a good
long while. He’d turn her in to the law in Colorado if it was the
last thing he ever did, reward or no reward.

Even the two thousand dollars and the chance
of getting Fire Mesa back dimmed beside the satisfaction he’d feel
hauling her in to Denver, trussed up like a roped calf. When Cole
spotted Arrow’s tracks swerving up a trail that flanked White
Canyon, he spurred the bay forward and gave a grunt of
satisfaction. He cleared his mind of everything but the job before
him, and let himself become wholly intent on his prey. All his
energy and concentration focused on tracking the girl who was
trying so desperately to elude him.