Lynna Banning (17 page)

He stood perfectly still, aware his body was trembling. “I’m frightened, too, Jess. I don’t trust anyone, not even my family. It makes me crazy sometimes. It makes me…hurt inside.”

His belly went cold. He’d revealed too much. Not even to Jeremiah had he admitted these things. Until this moment he had not admitted this much even to himself. He felt himself sucked into a vortex, then became aware that his mind was beginning to float, disoriented. God, what was happening to him?

Without conscious thought, he drew Jessamyn forward until her warm breath gusted against his neck. “Look at me,” he commanded, his voice quiet.

Mute, she shook her head.

“Kiss me, then.” He pulled her upward, half lifted her onto her toes and bent his head. When his mouth touched hers, his heart seemed to explode. Heat spiraled into his chest, his belly. “Jessamyn.” He spoke her name in a rough whisper. “Jessamyn.”

She opened to him, her mouth like black silk. He explored, went deeper, withdrew to gasp for breath. He kissed her again, too forcefully he knew, but he couldn’t stop. God, he wanted her.

She moaned under his lips.

He had to stop, had to ride into the hills before the day got any older. He lifted his mouth from hers and set her apart from him.

“Ben,” she breathed. “Don’t go.”

“I have to, Jess. The sun’s up good and high—I can’t wait any longer.”

“Don’t get killed,” she said in a trembling voice. “I’ll never forgive myself.”

Ben chuckled. “Neither will I. Jess, I’m sorry I—”

“No, you’re not,” she said. “Don’t lie to me.”

He laughed out loud. “You’re right, I’m not.”

To prove his point, he kissed her again, long and slow and deep. Then he pivoted away from her, grabbed the saddlebags up off the floor and strode to the door.

Shaken, Jessamyn watched his tall form step out onto the plank walkway and move past the front window toward the livery yard. She listened to the rowels on his spurs spin until the sound faded into nothing.

For the first time in her entire life she didn’t know what she wanted most—another firstrate issue of the
Wildwood Times
or Ben Kearney’s safety.

“Saddle up Blackie, would you, Gus?” Ben shifted the saddlebag to his other shoulder as he spoke to the liveryman.

The tall Norwegian trained his one blue eye on the sheriff. “How long you gonna be gone this time, Colonel?”

Bn winced inwardly at the man’s unconscious use of the military title. Gus had served as a major in the Union army. His observation of Ben’s superior military rank reminded Ben that—for Gus, at least—the war was over.

For Ben, the war would never be over. The battle inside himself between his hunger for human connection and his gut-level fear of loving another woman ate at his soul. Wanting a woman the way he had wanted Jessamyn not five minutes ago—the way he wanted her still—like a dying man seeking light, shattered his equilibrium. If he let himself love her, he would suffer.

As he eased the saddlebag off his shoulder and onto the ground, he resolved he wouldn’t think of her. Wouldn’t want her. Wouldn’t remember her scent, the feel of her silky hair tangled in his hands.

“How far you goin’, Colonel?” the wrangler repeated.

Ben jerked his attention back to Gus. “Don’t know yet.
Be gone three, maybe four days. Maybe a week—it depends.”

“Depends on what?” Gus gazed at him, a quizzical look in his one good eye.

“Hell, Gus, you know I’m not going to broadcast my plans to you or anyone else. No offense, but I’m still the sheriff around here, and I’ve got a bunch of missing cows and an unsolved killing on my hands.”

The husky man grinned and shrugged his massive shoulders. “No harm done, Ben. I’ll saddle your horse.”

Gus tramped away toward the stable, leaving Ben with an uneasy feeling gnawing at his gut. The tall liveryman always wanted to know Ben’s travel plans. Could Gus want to keep track of his comings and goings for his own reasons?

By agreement, Gus covered Ben’s tracks each time he headed out on a job, telling anyone curious enough to ask that Ben rode east when in fact he headed west, and vice versa. Outside of Jeremiah, Gus alone was privy to the truth of Ben’s whereabouts.

The wrangler tramped over to Ben, leading the gelding. “Here he is, Colonel. He’s been kinda restless these past two days. Could be the old boy’s ready for some new adventure.”

“Could be.” Ben checked the rawhide thongs securing his bedroll and slung his heavy saddlebags over the animal’s back. He’d packed more supplies than usual, including extra dried beans and coffee. For all he knew, he might be on the trail a week or more. He had a hunch about an old abandoned miner’s cabin in Copperblossom Canyon. Few people knew about it outside of Black Eagle and one or two of his braves. It would serve as a perfect hiding place for outlaws. Or, Ben thought with a grim smile, a cache of guns.

He hoped it would be the latter. If he could discover such a cache, he could stake out the place and let his quarry walk into a trap.

“Which way you ridin’, Colonel? Officially, I mean.”

Ben stepped into the stirrup and swung himself into the saddle. “South.”

“South.” Gus grinned up at him, his one good eye widening with interest. “Sure thing. Same as last time, huh? South.”

Ben kneed the horse, turning him toward the corral gate. “Take care of yourself, Major.” “That I will, Ben.”

The moment the sheriff turned north on the river trail, Gus smiled to himself and nodded his head in satisfaction. “Yessir, Colonel. That I will.”

By midday Ben had covered more than half the distance to Copperblossom Canyon. He rode steadily, his brain working to sort out the puzzle pieces he needed to fit together. If he’d guessed right, whoever was rustling cattle was also supplying guns to the remnants of Black Eagle’s tribe holed up in the mountains. At the very least, Black Eagle would know who was supplying the guns.

The connection with Thad Whittaker’s murder was even more tenuous, but a sixth sense told Ben these events were also linked. The outspoken newspaper editor had been his own worst enemy.

Ben’s heart stopped.
Oh, God, Jessamyn!
She was as forthright—and as foolhardy—as her father. She’d picked up right where Thad had left off, sticking her editorial finger in controversial pies all over Douglas County. The railroad. Indian rights.

Plus stolen cows and illegal rifles. That meant Jessamyn might be in as much danger as Thad had been. God almighty, she might be—

Ben swore under his breath. He’d left Jeremiah with instructions to keep a sharp eye on her. He knew his deputy would do so anyway—nothing could keep him away from the newspaper office. Jeremiah was drunk on printer’s ink. Ben knew he’d sneaked out last night to work until dawn
helping Jessamyn get the first issue of the
Wildwood Times
to press. There was nothing Jeremiah wouldn’t do for someone who could teach him more about the printed word.

Still, Ben felt uneasy being away from her. She was just headstrong enough, still enough of a tenderfoot in this wild country to get herself into trouble up to her neck.

After another three hours on the trail, he brought the gelding to a halt. He’d camp here, in the tiny grass-covered meadow that opened before him. The site was remote, accessible only by the trail he himself had followed. The place was so well hidden he’d even risk building a fire. Surrounded by rounded granite boulders the size of steam locomotives, a campfire wouldn’t be seen unless someone magically scaled the rocks above him. He chuckled. Not even Running Elk could fly!

Ben dismounted, unsaddled the gelding and lifted the saddlebag and bedroll off the horse’s sweaty back. He took his time building the fire. While it slowly kindled to life, he removed the bit from the animal’s mouth and held a double handful of oats under the broad lips. Finally, he rubbed the gelding down with a handful of dry quack grass. The floppy seedheads of the plant whispered against the horse’s warm, black hide. An echoey whisper bounced off the rocks.

Or did it?

“There now, boy,” Ben said. He smoothed his hands over the gelding’s twitching neck muscles. “Easy, fella.” He worked the grass clump down the horse’s withers, listening intently to the sound behind him.

Ben turned from the horse and tossed the dry grass onto the flames. The blaze mounted.

Maybe it was a coyote. Or a mountain lion. Whatever it was, it was trying to keep quiet. Ben drew in a careful breath.

And it didn’t move away when the fire flared. It was not an animal, then. It was a man.

His steps purposeful, Ben dug a sack of dried beans out
of his saddlebag and positioned himself between the fire and the unidentified sound. He filled a pan with water from his canteen, dropped in a handful of beans and shoved the pan into the flames.

If it was an Indian, one of Black Eagle’s scouts, the redolent smell of the cooking beans might bring him out. If it wasn’t…

Certain now that he was being watched, Ben turned sideways to the fire and with his left hand eased his revolver out of the holster. Holding it to his body with one elbow, he lowered his frame to the ground and settled back against a smooth, gray rock: With his right hand, he stirred the beans with a bent metal spoon. His ears strained for the slightest sound.

Nothing. The gelding shifted, gave a low whinny and began to crop the lush grass at his feet.

Ben waited. Sweat started down his forehead. Deliberately, he crossed his boots at the ankles and stared out past the fire at the impenetrable wall of darkness.

There!
A slow, indrawn breath, barely audible as the horse munched and gusted air in and out of its nostrils.

Ben stopped breathing.
Move, damn you! Make a noise!

Surreptitiously he slid his hand around the gun butt, positioned his forefinger against the trigger. He raised the weapon a scant inch and aimed it into the darkness, chest high.

“You can come out, now,” he said quietly. “Make it slow. You’re dead center in my sights.”

For a long, agonizing minute, nothing happened. The gelding stopped grazing suddenly and lifted its head, attentive. Its tail switched nervously back and forth.

Ben tightened his finger on the trigger.

C
ora Boult wrung the rinse water from the last embroidered pillowcase in her Tuesday white wash and tossed it onto the tower of wet linen in the wicker laundry basket. She hefted the bulging container off the bench, grunting at the renewed ache in her lower back, and staggered to the rope clothesline strung from the back porch to the sweet gum tree.

Dropping the basket, she straightened and surveyed her morning’s work. Before she could throw a single sheet over the line, Dan Gustafsen clumped up the garden path.

“Mornin’, Cora.”

“Morning, Gus.” Cora surveyed the tall man towering over her. Up close, the black patch over his left eye always unnerved her. For some reason, when she conversed with the soft-spoken liveryman, she couldn’t help focusing on the patch rather than his one good eye.

“Miss Jessamyn at home?”

“I expect Jessamyn’s down at the newspaper office. Subscriptions are rollin’ in today, prob’ly because her first issue’s been printed and delivered. She’s either there or over to the bank.”

Gus frowned. “It’s a fine newspaper. She’s…uh…a mite outspoken for a lady, but I guess she’ll learn.” He hesitated.

Cora seized the opportunity to toss her wet sheet over the line and tug the corners straight. “Something on your mind, Gus?”

“I…well, no. I guess not. She’s not at the newspaper office, though. I was just there. Wanted to give her these.”

From behind his back he produced a bouquet of peachblushed yellow roses clutched in one beefy fist.

“Oh, my,” Cora breathed. “Aren’t they something! Just look at that color. And no thorns! I do believe I’ll have to have a start of this one, Gus. I never seen one like it in all my born days.”

“It’s my new rose. A climber,” Gus added. “Would… would you give them to Miss Jessamyn, like you did the others? Blazes, I sure hope she likes roses!”

Cora stared into the Norwegian’s craggy, anxious face. Poor lovestruck man. Why, he looked positively greenapple sick. It made no sense to her why being sweet on someone made people feel the mis’ry. She’d loved Frank Boult until the day he died and never had a pecky day in her life.

Gus coughed self-consciously. “Could I maybe call again this evenin’? Maybe Miss Jessamyn’d fancy takin’ a walk down to the river.”

“Dunno ‘bout that, Gus.” Cora pinned a huck dish towel on the clothesline, drawing a wooden clothespin out of the cloth bag at her waist. “Jessamyn’s been down at the shop for the last two nights, workin’ on the newspaper. She’ll likely be dead on her feet by tonight.”

Gus’s brows lowered. “Anybody else ask after Miss Jessamyn lately?”

Cora removed the clothespin she held clamped between her teeth. “Now, that’s an odd question, Dan Gustafsen. Exactly what do you mean, ‘ask after her’?”

“I…uh…mean does anyone else—any man, I mean— know where she is?”

Cora laughed. “You think you can keep her other admirers away from her, is that it?” she huffed. “Gus, I’m
plumb surprised at you. A man don’t own a woman until he’s bought and paid for her, so to speak.”

“So to speak,” the bulky livery owner muttered, his low baritone voice dropping even lower. He thrust the bouquet at Cora. “I’ll call back tomorrow.”

Cora watched the big man pivot and stride through her back gate, his huge feet crunching on the river-rock path. “Lord love him,” she mused out loud. “A love-smitten giant who grows roses.”

She pinned up the remaining towels, then spilled the rinse water out on her prize damask rosebush.
And such roses!
She’d give her eyeteeth for that gold-tinted climber with the blush of peach on the petal edges.

Ben stared into the murky dark until his eyes burned. “Come on and show yourself,” he said in Yurok. He repeated the words in English. “Get it over with—my supper’s getting cold.”

A figure emerged from the inky blackness, and Ben leaped to his feet. “What in the bloody hell are you doing here?”

Jessamyn moved unsteadily into the circle of firelight. “I—I was frightened.”

“Frightened!” He spit the word out, jammed his Colt back into its holster. “You ride up here alone—I assume you’re alone—on an unfamiliar trail, at night Why the devil shouldn’t you be frightened?” His voice rang like steel. “For Lord’s sake, you don’t have the sense God gave an ant!”

Jessamyn nodded in silence.

“Well?” Shaking with barely controlled fury, Ben paced around her like a prowling mountain lion. “You could have fallen or been thrown. Gotten lost. God, I don’t know— died of thirst! Why, Jessamyn?
Why?”

“S-someone threw a rock through the window of the newspaper office. I was standing right in front of it, and
the glass just exploded. There were little p-pieces of it everywhere, and I—”

“A rock, huh? Even so, I ought to tan your backside,” Ben muttered. He stopped pacing long enough to rotate the pan of beans in the fire. “What makes you think you’re safer up here than tucked up cozy in Cora’s house in town?”

“My house,” she said wearily.

“All right,
your
house. Dammit, that’s not the point.”

“No,” she agreed. “It’s not.” Her voice came out thin and shaky. “I thought I’d be safer up here because… because you were here. I wasn’t thinking clearly, I guess.”

“You bet your boots you weren’t thinking!” he snapped.

“Ben, please. I had glass all over me, in my apron pockets, in my hair. I know I shouldn’t have come. It’s just that I was so unnerved…” Her head drooped. “I’m terribly sorry.”

“Where’s your horse?” he growled.

“Down the trail about a quarter of a mile. I came up the last part on foot to make less noise.”

“Stay here. I’ll go down for him.”

“Her. It’s Cora’s mare. Lady.”

He swung toward her. “Cora let you do this harebrained thing?”

“No,” Jessamyn blurted. “Cora won’t know I’m gone until tomorrow morning. She thinks I’m still at the news office, cleaning up the press. And—” her voice trembled “—all that glass.”

Without a word, Ben turned and strode back down the trail after her horse. He found it tethered to a scrub pine, a bedroll inexpertly tied in back of the saddle. No saddlebags, though Which meant she hadn’t brought food or extra clothing. Damn scared little fool. He’d like to throttle her for the fear she’d got pumping through his veins. His body shook like a schoolboy’s. Every inch of his skin felt
prickly, as if thousands of red-hot needles were branding him.

When he returned to camp, Jessamyn was sitting right where he’d left her. “Didn’t Gus try to stop you?” he snapped.

“I didn’t give him a chance. He said you’d gone south. That’s what he said the last time, so 1 figured you’d gone north, instead. Into the hills, as you did last time. I sneaked home to change clothes, and when I got back to the stable, Gus was gone. I saddled the mare myself and—” Her voice faltered. “Ben, could we please stop arguing? I’m so tired.”

His gut twisted. “I’ll just bet you are.” Despite his twinge of sympathy, he growled the words out like an enraged bear. Stalking behind her, he picketed the mare next to his gelding.

“I followed your tracks, Ben. I guessed they were yours, anyway.”

“My God, you could have trailed some damn cowhand all the way to Lane County! How did you manage to cross the river?”

“At the ford, where we crossed before, on our way to Black Eagle’s camp. I walked the horse across the shallow part.”

She knelt by the fire and began kneading her thigh muscles. “I did a lot of thinking on the trail today, Ben. I know I shouldn’t have come, and I’m sorry, really I am. I know you’re the sheriff and you’ve got a job to do, and I’m just in your way.”

Ben nodded his assent, tried to calm the pounding of his heart.

“I don’t want to…to be a trial. Just let me stay the night, will you? I promise I’ll go back in the morning.”

Ben studied the young woman who crouched at his fire. Firelight licked her dark hair, highlighted the delicate, sunburned cheekbones. She wore a different hat—a plain black felt with a braided cord around the crown. New, from the
look of it. Probably didn’t dare ask Cora if she could borrow Frank’s old Stetson, so she’d bought this one at Frieder’s on her way out of town. At least she’d thought that far ahead. No one traveled in this country without head protection.

Except for the way she filled out the red plaid shirt and skintight jeans, she looked like a tousle-haired kid playing cowboy.

“Are you hungry?”

Her green eyes widened. “Oh, yes. I found some cookies in Cora’s cookie jar, and I ate them along with some blackberries I picked along the trail, but it wasn’t very much. I’m starving!”

Ben rose to get another spoon from his saddlebag. “Any idea who threw that rock through your front window?”

“No. I was cleaning the press. My back was to the street.”

“Did you hear horses? A voice?”

“N-no.”

Dragging the pan of bubbling beans out of the fire, Ben maneuvered it onto a flat rock to cool. “Listen, Jessamyn. I’m not sure whoever did it really meant to harm you. Maybe they just wanted to scare you.”

Jessamyn pulled her knees up to her chest. Wrapping her arms around both legs, she rocked her body back and forth in jerky motions. After a moment she laid her forehead on her knees.

“You know, it’s an odd thing,” she began in a low, tight voice. “I was actually beginning to feel at home out here in the West. I like it. It’s different. Free.”

She raised her head and looked into Ben’s eyes. “But it’s also dangerous, isn’t it? And violent.”

Ben grunted.

“Do you really think that rock was meant to warn me about something? Something I printed in the newspaper?”

Ben nodded. “On the outside, the country looks peaceful enough, since the war’s over. But deep down there’s a good
many issues people out here are touchy about—Indians, for one. Railroads, for another. Getting the vote for women. You hit them all.”

“Oh,” she said in a small voice.

“I’d guess you got too close to some piece of information somebody doesn’t want known. Or you might have touched too hard on a sensitive issue.”

Jessamyn let out a long sigh. “Now I have to decide what to do next Should I print only what my readers approve of? The news Douglas County ranchers and townspeople want to hear? Or should I report the news that actually happens?”

“I can’t answer that, Jessamyn. I can give you a lot of good advice, but in the end, you’ve got the same problem Thad was stuck with—you’re the editor.” Ben stuck the extra spoon into the beans and laid one finger against the metal pan for a split second. Satisfied it wasn’t too hot to pick up, he lifted it and held it out to her.

“Supper.”

She grasped the spoon, tested a bite on her tongue and gobbled a double mouthful while Ben held the pan steady. When he got a chance, he shoveled a tasty bite into his own mouth.

“I feel like such a fool,” Jessamyn murmured when the pan was empty. Her voice was so low it was barely audible. “Without even thinking, I ate almost all of your dinner.”

“Yeah,” Ben said gently. “You’re a real thorn in my side.” He rose abruptly, rinsed the pan with water from his canteen, then refilled it. Adding a scant handful of coffee, he set the container among the coals.

“I’ve caused you no end of trouble, haven’t I?”

“No more than some. Listen, Jessamyn—”

Her chin drooped almost to her shirt buttons. “Well, I want you to know I’m sorry.”

Ben hesitated. He couldn’t believe the words that sprang to his lips. He had to choke them back.
I’m not sorry!
Despite the difficulty of backcountry travel with a greenhorn,
he wasn’t sorry for her company. He wasn’t sorry about any of it!

And that, he reasoned, would take some heavy thinking to sort out. All he knew was that Jessamyn was here with him now, and she was safe. Inexplicable as it seemed, he was glad on both accounts.

God almighty, what ailed him? Had he fried his brain in the sun today? He didn’t want to be saddled with her tomorrow, or any other day, for that matter. He didn’t want to have to watch over her, worry about her falling off that damned underexercised mare of Widow Boult’s. He didn’t want to see her wake up in the morning, see her hair tumbled loose about her face, her eyes soft and dewy with sleep.

But it wasn’t safe to send Jessamyn back to town now. It would be irresponsible to turn her loose, alone, on the trail he’d ridden to this point. On
any
trail. By now, whoever had harassed her earlier would know she’d ridden out of town, would probably know which direction she’d gone. He couldn’t risk an unknown assailant finding her, alone and unprotected.

With a forked stick Ben raked the pan of boiled coffee away from the coals.

“You can’t go back,” he said. He sipped the black brew from one side of the pan, then offered it to Jessamyn.

Jessamyn placed her small, cool hands over his and angled the container toward her. “I can’t keep up with you, Ben.”

“If you can’t go back, and you can’t keep up…”

She pushed the pan of hot coffee back toward him. “You’ll have to slow down,” she said, her tone matter-offact.

Ben blinked. “Slow down? Hell, lady, I’m tracking what may be your father’s killer and you want me to slow down?”

Jessamyn gave him a level look. “You can track him
slowly, can’t you? Besides, I handle the mare much better now. Maybe I can ride faster.”

Ben bit back a chuckle. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

“Maybe I could even help.”

“Like hell.”

“After all, Sheriff Kearney,” Jessamyn continued, “it was I who discovered that Indian’s new rifle, remember?”

Ben choked on a mouthful of coffee. He remembered, all right. She’d come within an ace of getting caught redhanded snooping through a Klamath brave’s private effects. To Black Eagle, that would have been a serious breach of honor.

“I’ll try not to slow you down or get in your way. I won’t talk on the trail, either, because by now I know you hate that.”

“You do,” he echoed, his tone disbelieving.

She looked him straight in the eye. “You’re going to send me back, aren’t you?”

“I wouldn’t think of it,” he said truthfully. “It’s against my better judgment, but I don’t see any other way. You’ll have to come with me.”