Nan Ryan (31 page)

Mollie snorted. “Make Lew Taylor want me? Not likely!”

Cherry pulled back and looked at her. “Taylor? Mollie, Lew’s name is Hatton. Lew Hatton.”

The chill had long since left the dry air and the August sun was high and hot overhead as Lew and Mollie rode in sullen silence across the flat Chino Valley. Lew’s eyes were unflickering in their concentration on the trail ahead. Mollie’s were fixed with anger.

Hatton! The name kept ringing in her head. Hatton. Hatton. Hatton.

Now it all made sense. Lew was William Hatton’s son, and William Hatton was the Yankee colonel her papa’s men had killed in the last days of the war. Rather, William Hatton was the man that the Kid had killed and in so doing changed all their lives forever. William Hatton’s death was the reason they’d had to leave their Texas home. The reason her mother had died on the trail. The reason her papa had started drinking. The reason the Rogers Renegades were born.

Mollie cast a glance at Lew’s hard face and felt her anger grow. She had lost far more than he had, and he was determined she would lose still more—her freedom. Damn him! It was unfair and she wouldn’t let it happen. One way or another, she would escape.

The sun suddenly went behind a cloud and the stark high desert darkened as though catching Mollie’s mood. Her eyes riveted to Lew, she thought grimly that no one would ever have recognized this cold, uninterested man slouched in the saddle as the same one who—less than twenty-four hours ago—had bought her champagne and taught her to gamble and danced seductively with her and got into a fistfight to defend her honor. And then later had gently undressed her and laughed and teased and kissed her in a moonlit bedroom.

The heartless bastard! The unprincipled son of a bitch!

“Something on your mind, outlaw?” Lew turned and caught her staring at him, a murderous look in her flashing violet eyes.

“Plenty,” she said and ranged her mount alongside his. “Why in blazes—after you trapped me—didn’t you tell me that your name is really Hatton?”

He shrugged. “Slipped my mind.”

Mollie gritted her teeth. “Nothing has
ever
slipped your mind, bounty hunter. You’re a cold, calculating impostor with a big stone for a heart and ice water for blood in your veins. Yet, it’s still hard for me to believe that any man—even one as unscrupulous as you—would make me pay for your father’s death all those years ago. Good Lord, I was a fifteen-year-old girl living with my mother on our Texas plantation.”

“Outlaw, this has nothing to do with my father’s death.”

“Then what is it? What have I done to—”

He cut her off. “Guess it’s slipped your mind.”

The pair were mute throughout supper
.

Lew was firmly resolved to keep Mollie at arm’s length. Mollie was just as determined to never again let her defenses down. Lew read the growing hatred in Mollie’s expressive eyes but was unmoved. If anything, he was glad to see it. A spiteful, disheveled Mollie Rogers in buckskins and boots was far easier to resist than the sweet-smelling, red-gartered girl he had foolishly kissed back in Prescott.

Crouching on his heels, Lew tossed the dregs from his coffee cup into the dying campfire, then got to his feet. “Bedtime,” he announced, his gaze touching Mollie where she sat across the fire, her arms wrapped around her bent knees.

Mollie didn’t answer, but rose and followed him to a spot near the banks of the Big Chino Wash where he had stacked their gear. Lew picked up their two blankets, tossed the brown one to her, and waited while she wrapped herself in it and lay down. He spun the red-and-blue Indian blanket around his shoulders and stretched out near—but not too near—Mollie.

He exhaled heavily, closed his tired eyes, and was lightly dozing almost immediately. Mollie, getting comfortable, hunched her shoulders and drew the coarse brown blanket up around her ears and face. She inhaled deeply and caught a hint of Lew’s unique scent. She sniffed the blanket. It smelled of him, that tantalizing scent that always clung to him. A provocative mixture of tobacco and leather and clean, sun-warmed flesh. Annoyed, she threw off the offensive cover and sat up.

“You have my blanket,” she said irritably.

Blinking, Lew came instantly awake. “What are you talking about?”

“I want my blanket, damn you. This one’s yours. You have mine and I want it!”

“You can have both if you’ll quiet down and go to sleep.”

“I don’t want both. I want mine.”

Wondering what the hell difference it made which blanket she had, Lew sat up, passed her the red-and-blue blanket and took the brown one.

Glaring at him, Mollie swept the cover around her shoulders and warned, “Never take my blanket again, bounty hunter.”

The disagreement over the blanket was not to be their only one. They clashed over which route they would take north and over the choice of campsites along the way and over how often they would stop to rest and over when and what they would eat.

And over his unkempt black beard and her tangled blond hair.

With each passing mile and hour, the pair grew more hostile toward one another. Physically, each had become what the other found most offensive.

To a woman who shuddered at the thought of a big, bearded, dangerous-looking man, Lew was both menacing and repugnant. His hard biceps strained the tight sleeves of his sweat-stained shirt, his shaggy raven hair curled down over his collar, and his beard was as thick and black as the darkest midnight.

To a man who had never taken a second glance at a woman who wasn’t well-groomed and delicate and endlessly feminine, Mollie was both annoying and disgusting. In her buckskin pants and man’s shirt she looked like a slim boy. Her face was sunburned and streaked with dirt and her hair was either flying in tangled disarray or carelessly knotted atop her head.

The two spent a lot of time casting disapproving looks at each other, allowing their expressions to speak volumes. But it was Mollie who first put it into words. It happened one hot afternoon when Lew reined his mount in a bit too close and inadvertently brushed her leg with his own.

She glared at him and said hotly, “Hatton, you are exactly the kind of man I find repulsive.”

Eyeing her dusty buckskins, sweat-soaked shirt, and stringy hair, he replied, “And you, outlaw, are just the kind of woman I find revolting.”

They argued for a while about who was the most offensive. But moments later they were silent as they rode single file, angling around a steep cliff on their way down into the wide, flat Dead Horse Canyon. They were almost down when Mollie abruptly pulled up on her mount and called out to Lew. His squinty-eyed gaze followed her pointing finger.

On the canyon floor, a couple of miles away, a detail of mounted men cantered in their direction. Guidons fluttered in the light breeze, and the dust of the ponies spiraled against the cloudless Arizona sky. Even at this distance Lew could make out the civilian clothing and the dark skin of the Apache Scouts Corps of the U.S. Army. Two dozen soldiers in military blues rode with the scouts.

Lew knew what it meant. The Apaches were off the reservation again and causing trouble somewhere in the vicinity.

Mollie, watching the strange contingent move steadily forward, felt her pulse quicken. Since leaving Prescott, they had seen no one. She’d had no opportunity to escape. Perhaps here was her chance. She quickly lifted her eyes to the sun. It was on its westerly drop.

Kneeing her horse to urge it on down the trail, she said as casually as possible, “I’m awfully hungry. Are you?”

“A little.” Lew’s horse whickered, picking up the scent of the approaching scouts’ mounts. “Maybe they’ll invite us to supper.”

She nodded, then asked, “What are those savages doing with the soldiers?”

“They’re Apache scouts hired by the army to track down renegade Indians.”

Before she could reply, a slim, uniformed soldier broke ranks and galloped forward to meet them. He brought his stallion to a halt a few yards away, raised a gloved hand, and snapped off a crisp military salute. He introduced himself and graciously invited them to join the garrison of the Fifth Cavalry, United States Army, for the evening meal.

“My sister and I would be honored, Captain Jackson,” said Lew and Mollie’s head snapped around. He silenced her with a look and introduced her as Miss Mollie Hatton.

The detachment quickly and efficiently set up camp at the base of the seven thousand–foot Casner Mountain. At sundown an appetizing meal was served and Mollie found herself seated between Lew and a young, curly-haired lieutenant who couldn’t take his eyes off her.

Lew talked quietly with the commanding officer on his left, but kept an ear tuned to Mollie’s conversation with the obviously smitten lieutenant. He couldn’t recall her ever being quite so talkative and attentive. Casting cool, cynical glances her way, Lew noted with amusement the way she smiled flirtatiously at the young soldier. She looked up at the boy with wide violet eyes, listening to him speak as though he were the most fascinating man she had ever met.

Mollie shot Lew a sideways glance when he rose to his feet and shook hands with an officer who had just joined them. But the curly-haired lieutenant quickly brought her attention back to him.

“I sure wish you and I could take a stroll in the moonlight, Miss Hatton,” he said, then blushed to the roots of his hair and swallowed nervously, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.

Sweetly, Mollie said, “My big brother is very protective, but perhaps we could take a short walk.”

“I can’t, Miss Hatton. I’m not a free man.”

“You’re not?”

“No. I’m to stand first guard with the picketed horses. I don’t get off watch until two
A.M.”

“I see,” she said and smiled, plans for the unsuspecting lieutenant rapidly forming in her head. “And exactly where, Ben, are the horses picketed?”

He inclined his head. “About two hundred yards west of here, around the base of the mountain.”

Mollie smiled enigmatically. “Some other time then, Ben.”

“Yes, Miss Hatton,” he said, crestfallen that such an unexpected opportunity had to be passed up in the line of duty.

Much later that night, Mollie, wide awake and tingling with anticipation, lay beside the sleeping Lew on a grassy slope up the mountain and apart from the soldiers. Patiently she waited for the soldiers’ conversations and occasional laughter to die away. Finally a nighttime hush fell over the camp and the fires burned low. Mollie turned her head and looked at Lew. He lay on his back, eyes closed. She leaned close and whispered his name. No response. His head turned slightly and he licked his lips, but his eyes remained closed in slumber. The gold chain he wore gleamed on his tan throat and Mollie momentarily wondered—as she had many times before—what was on the chain.

Her curiosity passed immediately. She had work to do. She eased herself up into a sitting position. When Lew still didn’t move, she threw off the blanket, picked up her sheepskin jacket, and shot to her feet. Her eyes on the sleeping Lew, Mollie backed away, her heart hammering in her chest. When there was twenty yards between them, she turned and hurried off into the night.

She shoved her arms into the sheepskin jacket and, walking briskly, skirted the camp. She picked her way around the mountain slope, scrambling over scattered boulders and ducking beneath the stiff-limbed juniper and piñon pines, at times losing the bright moonlight as she trudged through the dense forest.

She was out of breath when she finally spotted the long line of picketed horses and the lone soldier standing guard. Mollie paused, looked about, stooped and picked up a smooth rock. She weighed it in her hand. Satisfied, she shoved it into her jacket pocket and ambled nonchalantly down the incline.

“Halt!” said Lieutenant Benjamin J. Atwood, raising his rifle.

“Ben, it’s me,” Mollie lifted her hands and fanned out her long blond hair. “Mollie Hatton.”

“Mollie?” he said, slowly lowering the rifle.

“Yes, Ben. I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about you.” She quickly crossed the space between them. “Have you been thinking about me?” She stepped up close to him.

“Ah … I … I’ve thought of nothing else,” said the soldier truthfully. “You’re just the prettiest girl I ever did see.”

With cool authority, Mollie took the rifle from the lieutenant. He was so entranced he made no attempt to stop her.

“You won’t need this weapon while I’m here, will you?” she said, then walked over and leaned the rifle against the trunk of a towering Ponderosa pine. “Unless,” she came back to him, reached up and toyed with a brass button on his uniform blouse, “you’re afraid of me. Are you, Ben?”

Lieutenant Benjamin Atwood swallowed hard, but lifted his hands to gently cup her upturned face. “No, Mollie. Are you afraid of me?”

“Should I be?”

“No.” His thumbs skimmed over her cheeks when he added, “But I sure would like to kiss you.”

“Then why don’t you?” Mollie swayed closer.

His lips trembled as they descended to hers. Their mouths met. The kiss lasted for only a few seconds. Mollie could hardly hide her frustration. She needed more time. She went up on tiptoes, put her arms around the lieutenant’s neck, and said, “Oh, Ben, Ben, kiss me again.”