Heart of the Hunter (4 page)

Her gaze drifted down, appreciating the way his faded jeans
hugged his long, muscular legs.

She drew back from the window when, unexpectedly, he glanced
over his shoulder. Had he seen her watching him? The thought brought a rush of
heat to her cheeks. She wasn’t in the habit of gawking at handsome men. She’d
seen plenty of good-looking guys in Los Angeles. The place was crawling with
gorgeous hunks who hoped to be actors or models. She’d even dated a few, but
there had been something disconcerting about going out to spend an evening with
a man who was prettier than she was.

But Lee Roan Horse��he wasn’t pretty. He wasn’t even
handsome, at least not in the traditional sense of the word. But he had a
rugged masculine appeal that she found attractive on some primal, earthy level
she didn’t care to examine too closely.

Kelly shook his image from her mind and headed for the
bathroom. A nice cool shower was just what she needed.

Forty minutes later, she opened the back door and called Lee
Roan Horse to breakfast. He entered the kitchen whistling and tucking his shirt
into his jeans. He nodded in her direction, then went to the sink to wash his
hands. Big hands, Kelly thought. Capable hands that were scarred and callused.
She wondered if they could be gentle.

Lee dried his hands on a dish towel, then stood beside the
sink, his gaze moving around the kitchen. It was a large, square room. The
walls were a pale yellow. Matching curtains fluttered at the open window. A badly
scarred walnut table stood in the center of the room.

“Sit down,” Kelly said. “Anyplace you like. I’m not used to
having company at breakfast.”

“Oh?” His look was curious.

“I live alone, remember?”

She filled a plate with hot cakes, eggs and bacon and set it
on the table in front of him, along with a cup of coffee, a tall glass of
orange juice and a plate of buttered toast.

“Eat it while it’s hot,” she said, and turned back to the
stove to flip the hot cakes on the griddle.

Lee sat down, his nostrils filling with the aroma of bacon
and coffee. He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had cooked for him, or
the last time he’d sat down to a breakfast that consisted of much more than
black coffee. But all that would change when he had the gold.

Kelly joined him at the table a few moments later, surprised
to find his plate nearly empty. She wasn’t used to cooking for a man, but she’d
felt certain that six hot cakes, three eggs, four slices of bacon and toast
would be enough. Apparently she’d been wrong. If he ate like this at every
meal, she’d have to make a trip into town a lot sooner than she planned.

“Would you like some more?” she asked, a smile in her voice.
She’d never considered herself much of a cook, but he obviously appreciated her
culinary skills. Either that, or it had been a long time between meals.

He shook his head, not meeting her eyes. “No, thanks.”

“Are you sure?” As soon as the words were out of her mouth,
she knew she’d made a mistake. A muscle worked in his jaw and she had the very
real impression that she’d somehow insulted him.

“It’s just that…I mean, you must have worked up quite an
appetite. I just thought…” Kelly shrugged. “It’s just that I made too much and
I hate to see it go to waste.”

Lee stared at her from across the table, remembering the
pitying looks he’d gotten from white women when he was a kid begging in the
streets for food, food to feed his invalid grandmother, his little sister, his
alcoholic mother.

Kelly frowned. Roan Horse was still hungry. She knew it as
surely as she knew the color of her own hair. So she took a deep breath and
said, “It’s a long time ’til lunch, you know.”

“I’m fine, thank you,” he said, stiffly polite, and then he
stood up and left the room, the rest of his food untouched.

Kelly stared after him, wondering why he was so touchy,
wondering what she’d said to offend him.

Outside, Lee ripped the broken rails from the fence,
attacking the corral as if it were every man or woman who had ever humiliated
him. He’d hated begging for food, for money to buy medicine for his
grandmother. He’d hated begging so badly he had turned to stealing instead.

In the old days, stealing from the enemy had been considered
a great coup and that was how he had looked at it. He’d been full of hate in
his younger days, hate for the whites, hate for the poverty he lived in, for
the ugly little house he shared with his family, hate for the father he barely
remembered who had run off and left them all behind.

He was breathing hard by the time he’d removed the rails
that needed to be replaced. He’d thought it was all behind him, the hatred, the
anger, the bitterness he’d grown up with. He’d thought he’d buried it when he
buried his mother.

Bracing one hand on a post, he rested his forehead on his
arm and closed his eyes. They were all gone now. His grandmother had died
peacefully in her sleep. His little sister had died of pneumonia when she was
only eight years old. And his mother had finally drunk herself to death.

He swore softly. All his life, he’d wanted a vision. He’d
gone alone to the mountains to fast and to pray; he’d offered tobacco to the
four winds, to the earth and the sky, but always a vision had been denied him.
And then, when he had given up all hope, his vision had come.

Even now, it was clear in his mind. He’d been standing at
his mother’s grave, dry-eyed and alone, wondering what to do with his life,
when the day had turned dark and cold. A heavy gray mist had fallen over the
land and then a man had materialized out of the mist. A tall man with long
black hair and dark copper-colored skin. A warrior who wore a golden eagle on a
thong around his neck.

You are not alone
, the warrior had said.
Only
believe and all you desire will be yours.

Who are you
? Lee had asked. But the warrior hadn’t
answered and Lee had wondered if perhaps he had been seeing himself at some
future time, but that didn’t make sense. How could he foretell his own future?

The warrior had gone on to tell Lee of a cache of Lakota
gold hidden in a cave in the mountains to the north.

Find the woman and you will find the treasure
, the
warrior had said, and then, like shadows running before a storm, he had
disappeared.

Well, he had found the woman, Lee mused. His talk of buying
the ranch had been just that, talk. He didn’t have enough money to fill his gas
tank, let alone buy the Triple M, but he’d done what he set out to do. Now all
he had to do was find the gold.

A wry grin curved his lips as he recalled a sign he’d seen
in an old grocery store in Virginia City.

THE GOLDEN RULE:

HE WHO HAS THE
GOLD

MAKES THE RULES

Well, he intended to have the gold, one way or another, he
thought grimly. He hadn’t spent a year in that damned jail for nothing.

“Lemonade?”

Lee’s head jerked up at the sound of her voice. “What?”

He turned around to face her and she offered him a chilled
glass of lemonade.

“I thought you might be thirsty,” Kelly said with a shrug.

“Yeah, thanks,” he replied, and taking the glass, he drained
it in two long swallows.

“I guess I should have brought the whole pitcher,” Kelly
remarked, and then bit down on her lip, afraid she’d offended him again.

But he only grinned at her as he dragged the back of his
hand across his mouth.

“You don’t have to finish everything today,” she said,
indicating the corral.

Lee shrugged. “I like to keep busy.”

“Oh. Well, I’d better let you get back to work then. I’ll
call you when lunch is ready.”

He nodded, his conscience stabbing at him as he watched her
walk away. He hadn’t come here to work. He’d come here to steal. He tried to
tell himself it wasn’t stealing, not really, it was only taking back what was
rightfully his. But he hadn’t expected to like Kelly McBride. She seemed so
open, so honest, not like Melinda…

Muttering an oath, he picked up his shirt and wiped the
perspiration from his face and neck.

He’d fix the corral and patch up the roof, even paint the
damn house. It was the least he could do for her, he thought, before he went
looking for the gold.

Chapter Five

Harry Renford leaned forward in his chair, both hands flat
on the desktop.

“I cannot believe you actually hired that man,” he said,
shaking his head.

Kelly frowned, baffled by the banker’s obvious annoyance. “He
needed a job. I needed some work done.” She shrugged. “I don’t understand why
you’re making such a fuss about it. A lot of the ranchers around here hire
Indians.”

“Don’t you know who he is?”

“He said his name was Lee Roan Horse.”

“Didn’t your grandfather ever mention him?”

“Not that I recall. Why?”

“Your grandfather caught Roan Horse trespassing. He warned
him not to come back, but the Indian didn’t listen. The next time your
grandfather caught him sneaking around, he called the police and had Roan Horse
arrested for breaking and entering.”

“When was that?” Kelly stared at Renford, not wanting to
believe him. And yet, hadn’t she known, deep down, that Lee was hiding
something? It was the gold, she thought. Lee knew about the gold. That was why
he wanted to buy the ranch, why he had been so insistent that she hire him.

“It was quite a while ago, probably four or five years. Roan
Horse did a year in the county jail. When he was released, he left town. He’s
only been back a few months, but he’s already been in trouble. Bar fights and
the like.”

Harry picked up a thin gold pen and rolled it back and forth
on the desktop. “Don’t trust him, Miss McBride. Lee Roan Horse is bad clear
through. Mean, too. I heard he broke Ronny Brogden’s nose in a brawl just last
week.”

Kelly had a sudden mental image of Lee Roan Horse with his
back against a wall, his hands curled into tight fists, his muscles taut as he
took a swing at the aforementioned Ronny Brogden. She’d met Ronny years ago on
one of her summer visits to Cedar Flats. He’d been a bully and a braggart and
she thought it likely that he’d probably only gotten what he deserved, but of
course she couldn’t tell the banker that.

“Please don’t trouble yourself about it, Mr. Renford,” Kelly
said, forcing a smile. “Everything’s under control. Now, is the deed ready?”

“Yes, the deed,” Renford muttered, not meeting her eyes. “I’m
afraid it’s missing.”

“Missing? How is that possible?”

Renford spread his hands in a gesture of appeal. “I’m not
sure. All I know is that it’s not in the vault. I’m sure it’s simply been
misplaced.”

“I see.”

“I’ll call you just as soon as it turns up.” Renford smiled.
“Signing the deed is just a technicality. Even though your grandfather didn’t
leave a valid will, there’s no question of who the ranch belongs to. Your
grandfather had no other kin.”

“I understand,” Kelly replied. But she didn’t, not really,
nor could she shake the feeling that there was something Renford wasn’t saying,
something he wasn’t telling her.

“I’ll call you,” Harry said. Rising, he extended his hand.

It was a curt dismissal.

Kelly was fuming when she reached home. It seemed as if
everyone she met was conspiring against her. First she’d had to go into
Coleville to exchange a few gold nuggets for cash. A trip that should have
taken less than an hour took two because a truck had jackknifed on the road,
bringing all traffic to a halt.

From Coleville, she’d driven back to town to settle her
grandfather’s hospital bill. No easy task. Her grandfather had spent three days
in the hospital before he died. They had tried to charge her for six days and
then seemed annoyed because she had refused to pay them for the extra three
days.

Renford hadn’t been able to find the deed and she was having
second thoughts about the wisdom of paying off the loan and having nothing
other than a receipt to show for it. And now it seemed that Lee Roan Horse had
hired on under false pretenses.

Kelly blew out a long sigh. Maybe she should just take the
gold out of the cave and sell the ranch to Lee Roan Horse. It would serve him
right. And yet, even as she thought about taking the gold, more gold than she
would ever need, she felt suddenly cold, as if the chill wind from the cave had
blown into the car.

Switching off the ignition, she sat behind the wheel. From
where she sat, she could see Lee sawing a new rail for one of the corrals. Of
course he wanted to fix up the place, she thought bitterly. He intended to own it.

She let her eyes travel over his broad back. Didn’t the man
ever wear a shirt? Angry as she was, she couldn’t seem to stop watching him. He
moved with effortless grace, the muscles in his arms and back bunching and
relaxing as he worked.

He’d been in jail for breaking and entering. She grunted
softly, remembering the night he’d broken into the house. No wonder he knew
what he’d be charged with when she had threatened to call the police. He’d
already done time for breaking and entering. She supposed a year in jail could be
considered a small price to pay in exchange for a fortune in gold.

Take only what you need. If you take one nugget more, my
spirit will haunt you for as long as you live
.

That had been the warning given to Charlie McBride when he
first found the gold a hundred years ago. Thinking of it now sent a shiver down
Kelly’s spine. In the bright light of day, it was hard to believe in ghosts and
curses, yet she knew she lacked the courage to enter the cave and remove all
the gold.

So, what was she to do? Take as much as she needed and run
back to L.A.?

She let her gaze sweep over the ranch. In the short time she’d
been here, she’d come to love the place—the timeless beauty of the mountains,
the quiet nights and peaceful days. She’d thought she’d miss the excitement of
the city, but, to her surprise, she’d discovered that she preferred the soft
pastoral sounds of tree frogs and crickets to the grinding of brakes and the
shrill scream of sirens. She preferred blue skies and green trees to smog and
tall, glass-fronted buildings. And she definitely preferred riding Dusty to
braving the Los Angeles freeways!