Late that afternoon, Hud gestured northwest, calling the three boys’ attention to the flock of birds circling in the near distance. “That’s a sure sign of water. But a watering hole presents the possibility of not only birds but also two-legged and four-legged predators.”
“Like those Indians that charged at us earlier,” Howie mumbled apprehensively as he glanced left then right. “I thought we were goners for sure.”
“This land once belonged to the Kiowa and Comanche tribes,” Hud informed them. “Our government offered a treaty to preserve their land but white ranchers decided they wanted to graze herds of cattle on it. Not surprising that the tribes felt betrayed and struck out when they were driven off their land and herded onto reservations.”
Georgie frowned pensively. “Don’t know that I wouldn’t put up a fuss myself. I don’t have much but I don’t like it when some bully tries to take what’s mine away from me.”
“The less you have the more possessive you are about your belongings,” Hud murmured as he led the boys into a winding gorge to avoid being seen.
“Thanks to Ellie, we don’t have to worry ’bout that anymore,” Howie remarked. “She bought us these fine clothes and boots and our own horses. She clipped our hair then she arranged for us to take jobs with the theater troupe.”
Georgie snickered as he pointed at Howie. “You still think you wanna be in one of those plays? Singing and dancing?”
Howie nodded his blond head. “I can sing better than some of those actors. You’ve heard me.”
After an extended silence Tommy half twisted in the saddle to study Hud closely. “You gonna take Ellie away from us?”
Hud shrugged. “Not by choice. I was sent here to accompany her to a Ranger camp to meet a mutual acquaintance.” Her father to be specific, but he honored Bri’s wish to keep a low profile.
“Why can’t we come with you?” Howie asked. “I really like Ellie. If I had a mamma I’d want her to be as nice and pretty as Ellie.”
“Wouldn’t we all, kid,” Hud mumbled.
“Pardon?” Tommy stared quizzically at him.
“I said she’s really something all right.”
“We saw you kissing her.” Georgie fixed his big brown eyes on him. “Are you sweet on her, Hud?”
“Well, are ya?” Tommy wanted to know that very second.
“Are you?” Hud questioned the direct question.
Tommy nodded decisively. “I’d marry her if I was older.”
“Then maybe I’d marry her if I were younger,” Hud teased.
“How old are you?” Howie asked, and the other boys stared speculatively at him.
“Old enough to know better.” Hud grinned playfully. “I’ll let you boys in on a secret. There isn’t a man alive who understands women. So don’t set too high expectations for yourselves.”
“I don’t have to understand her,” Howie proclaimed. “I love Ellie because she cares about us when nobody else does.”
“You’re right,” Hud agreed, biting back a smile. “We all love her because she isn’t afraid to stand up for her friends and for what she believes in.”
“And you should see her handle a rifle and pistol,” Georgie said proudly. “She outshot the men in the troupe. She also promised to teach us to handle weapons after she comes back to fetch us at The Flat.”
All three boys stared at Hud with so much hope in their smiles that it hit him where he lived. These three misplaced kids were going to soften him up if he didn’t watch out.
When Hud didn’t reassure them Howie asked, “Do you think Ellie will come to fetch us like she said?”
“Has she lied to you yet?”
All three boys shook their heads.
“Then there you go.” Hud halted when he noticed hoofprints crossing their path. “Comanches,” he murmured then glanced in all directions.
“How can you tell?” This from Georgie, who looked uneasy.
“No horseshoes.”
“You think they’ll take us captive?” Tommy asked gravely.
Hud smiled and tried to sound reassuring. “I won’t let them, but they’d be proud to have three young braves like you. Of course, after you learned all the Comanche can teach you about riding, weapons and surviving in places most white men can’t, then you could sneak off together.”
The comment seemed to appease them.
“Did the Comanche capture you when you were a kid?” Georgie asked. “Is that how you know so much about living out here in the wilderness?”
“I learned by watching Indians while being a Ranger.”
“Maybe I’ll be a Ranger someday,” Tommy decided impulsively.
“Then pay attention.” Hud led the way around the mesquite trees that rimmed a small spring at the base of a rocky escarpment. “There are a few more things you boys need to know before you sign up.”
Bri glanced anxiously into the blinding sunset as the caravan moved west. Golden rays slanted across the rugged terrain, casting deepening shadows. She hadn’t had a single sighting of Hud and the boys since they rode off hours earlier. Although she hadn’t heard gunshots, she reminded herself that bows, arrows and knives in the hands of a raiding party were silent and deadly.
This was wild, unforgiving country, with rugged, twisting shelves of wind-swept land that broke off into deep, eroded canyons and V-shaped gorges. Steep slopes often became sheer cliffs on either side of the trail. Although the caravan had halted to refill their canteens and water barrel at a small oasis, surrounded by willows and locust trees, they traveled several more miles without seeing anything but scrub oaks, mesquite, cactus and sagebrush.
“Cursed hide hunters,” Bri muttered sourly when she noticed several skinned buffalo carcasses strewn around the bottom of a cliff. “They stripped off the wooly skin and left the carcasses to rot. Now buzzards and wolves compete for the rotting meat.”
“No wonder the Indians dislike whites so much,” Lelia Korn, who sat beside her on the wagon seat, said.
“Hide hunters have wiped out the Indians’ food supply and overtaken their land. Honestly, sometimes I’m ashamed to be white,” Bri grumbled.
“Maybe so, girl, but that’s no reason to scalp innocent folks who have nothing to do with butchering their buffalo and breaking treaties. You’d think there would be enough room out here for everybody to have his own space,” Milton commented.
You’d think.
“Wagons halt!” Milton bellowed then glanced at Lieutenant Davis, who trotted his horse up beside them. “This site okay for spending the night?”
Davis hitched his thumb over his shoulder. “There’s a shallow creek below this hill, if memory serves. We can find mesquite wood to make a campfire.”
He tossed a charming smile in Bri’s direction. He looked to be three or four years older than she was. He also appeared to be eager to strike up a friendship with her. Too bad she was harboring a frustrated attraction for that raven-haired Ranger with the brawny physique and whiskey-colored eyes.
And he had damn well better return to camp in one piece, with the boys tagging along—or else.
Bri didn’t realize that she had sagged in relief when the foursome topped the rise of ground, spotlighted by the angled rays of sunset.
Lelia nudged her, silently urging her to climb down. “You okay, hon?”
“Daydreaming is all,” she insisted as she hopped to the ground.
While the Korns strode off to unload bedding and cooking utensils, Bri hiked downhill to fetch wood for the campfire. It had been a few years since she had enjoyed a cookout with Benji. Lately she had been trapped in elegant drawing rooms filled with dignitaries and debutantes who postured and preened in attempts to impress each other.
Swooping down, Bri scooped up several fallen branches. She yelped in alarm when she heard a deadly rattle that sounded too close for comfort. She’d been lollygagging rather than paying attention to her surroundings and she had unknowingly disturbed a diamondback. When the six-foot-long viper coiled and raised its head to strike, Bri tossed her armload of logs at it.
When she tried to leap out of striking distance, she tripped over the trailing hem of her dress. She landed with a thud and another yelp.
The snake recoiled when she made the mistake of trying to scramble back to her feet—and unintentionally scattered the dry leaves around her. The extra noise put the viper on highest alert.
Bri wondered how many times a rattler had to strike before depleting its deadly venom. The snake’s triangular head rose higher and its forked tongue flicked out. Bri gulped hard when deadly black eyes—the exact color of the devil’s soul, she was sure—focused on her.
Hud had been in camp for less than two minutes when he heard two yelps and a gunshot rising up the creek bank. He glanced around, noting that Bri was nowhere in sight.
He raced toward the sound of the gunshot, hoping like hell that Bri wasn’t on the wrong end of it. He didn’t like the idea of anyone shooting at her. He reserved that luxury for himself because she had made a fool of him when she disappeared from The Flat without so much as a fare-thee-well.
Shoving saplings and underbrush out of his way, Hud bounded down the steep embankment like a mountain goat. He could hear the three boys thrashing behind him, calling out Ellie’s name, but he didn’t look back.
Hud’s thoughts scattered like buckshot when he spotted Bri. She was sprawled on the ground. Her skirt and petticoats rode high on her legs. Two bright red garters encircled her creamy thighs.
The sight of her shapely legs distracted him to such extremes that he tripped over his own two feet. Scowling, Hud jerked himself upright before he dived the rest of the way downhill. It took another moment for him to plug his eyes back into their sockets and assess the situation that had provoked her to yelp loudly and fire off a shot.
She was holding a piddling little single-shot derringer in her right hand. She had a thin-bladed stiletto clamped in her left fist. Her breasts heaved beneath the bodice of her gown as she stared at the granddaddy of all rattlesnakes that lay four feet in front of her.
Hud wasn’t sure if she was damn lucky or deadly accurate with her pistol. Nevertheless, the viper’s head was no longer attached to the long body that continued to coil around a pile of logs. Assured that Bri was safe—more or less—Hud’s gaze drifted instinctively back to her legs. When she heard the boys clambering toward her, she swooped down to jerk her skirt modestly to her ankles.
“Nice shot,” Hud praised as he hooked his forearms under her armpits and hoisted her to her feet. When she swayed slightly he held onto her until she could stand on her own. “Where’d you learn to shoot like that, Princess?”
Bri drew in a deep breath, squared her shoulders and gathered her composure. Hud unwillingly admired the way she pulled herself together rather than blubbering tears.
“I’m a soldier’s daughter,” she reminded him. “During Papa’s visits I insisted that he teach me to handle weapons. He always accommodated me because my mother objected strenuously, and we both delighted in ruffling her aristocratic feathers.”
“Are you okay, Ellie?” the boys asked in unison as they stumbled to a halt in front of her.
She smiled reassuringly as she tucked her derringer into her pocket. Then she reached out to smooth each boy’s mussed hair into place. “I’m fine. The rattler and I startled each other. I should have been paying more attention.”
Howie bobbed his head in agreement. “That’s what Hud said. ‘Always pay attention and never approach a watering hole without looking for predators.’”
She arched a brow and glanced at Hud before fixing her gaze on the boys. “Wise advice. What else did this fount of frontier knowledge teach you while you were scouting?”
“He showed us how to read hoofprints,” Georgie replied.
“And how to locate watering holes from a distance,” Tommy added.
Bri smiled approvingly. “Thank you, Captain Stone.”
“Hud,” he insisted then turned his attention to the boys. “Gather up the wood and haul it to the campsite, will you? Ellie and I will be along in a minute.”
Nodding agreeably, the boys collected the logs Bri had dropped then added more to the stack.
When they were out of earshot, Hud looked her over carefully. “Now that you don’t have to put up pretenses to reassure your devoted puppies, I want to know if you’re really all right.”
“I’m fine, Cap—”
“Hud,” he corrected emphatically.
When Bri turned her back and hiked up her skirt to replace her pistol and knife in her garters, Hud had to bite his tongue to prevent offering to help. Damn it, the sight of her creamy thighs would be forever burned into his eyeballs.
“I can’t imagine why you’re fussing over me,” she said with a smirk. “I thought you were perturbed with me.”
“I am. Nevertheless, you’re still my responsibility and my assignment. Direct orders from your father, in fact.”
“I don’t want to be your responsibility,” she said as she pivoted to face him. “I can take care of myself.”
It was Hud’s turn to smirk. “You think your father won’t have my head on a platter if something—a nasty snake-bite, for instance—causes you injury on my watch? I get the impression that your father is especially fond of you.”
She grinned impishly. “Of course he is. It’s my sparkling personality and charm that endears him to me.”
Hud snorted then gestured toward her left leg, where she kept her stiletto stashed from sight. “He’s probably afraid to cross you, for fear you’ll come at him with weapons drawn if he doesn’t cater immediately to your every whim.”
He didn’t know why he was baiting her. Maybe because he liked to see that flash of fire in those luminous blue-violet eyes. Maybe because he liked to tease her and watch her rise to the challenge.
She didn’t disappoint. She took a bold step toward him then surprised him by running her hand down his rawhide vest. Her light touch distracted him and he peered helplessly into those hypnotic eyes as her hands descended over his hips.
“Are you afraid of me, Hud?” she murmured softly.
Honest to God he was. He was afraid this woman was getting to him when he didn’t want her to. For sure, he had received a jolt of fear when he’d heard a yelp that was followed by a gunshot. He had pictured her bleeding all over herself, the victim of an attack. He’d been worried—and not just because she was his responsibility. He was afraid this turmoil of complicated feelings she aroused in him were beginning to rival his need to avenge Speck Horton. And that, Hud told himself, had disaster written all over it.
Hud wanted nothing to stand between him and his crusade. Yet, deep down he liked this extraordinary woman. She looked like a dainty fairy princess, but she was capable of fending for herself. Tough and tender, that was Gabrielle Price.
“Are you?” she prompted when Hud lingered too long in thought.
“Afraid of a five-foot-nothing female?” he teased, but his voice evaporated when he felt the barrels of his own peacemakers gouging his ribs. Stunned, he glanced down to see that she had picked his pockets—his holsters to be more accurate—and he hadn’t realized it until it was too late.
“Another street trick?” he presumed as he retrieved his weapons from her.
“Yes, compliments of my mentor from Houston.”
Hud slid his arms around her waist, drawing her closer, feeling forbidden need spurt through him. He angled his head, as if he were about to kiss her. Then he glided his hands over her hips in a light caress.
“Very impressive skills…” He surrendered to the erotic temptation by brushing his lips over her responsive mouth.
Suddenly hungry need gnawed at him—as it always did when he came within two feet of this attractive female. He inhaled her scent, tasted her and felt her shapely body mesh against his. She took his breath away when she kissed him back and it required every ounce of willpower he could muster to withdraw when his male body was shouting obscenities at him for refusing to take as much as she was willing to offer.
Steeling himself against the onslaught of unappeased need, Hud raised his head and nudged her elbow with the edge of her gold pocket watch. He saw her eyes widened in surprise when she realized that he had deftly picked her pocket.
“I grew up in the same stinking back alleys as your friend Benji,” he told her, his voice not as steady as he would have preferred after sharing a scalding kiss.
Her eyes widened in surprise. She studied him intently.
“The only difference is that my alleys were in New Orleans. Speck Horton was the brother I never had and we watched each other’s backs. Thanks to the kindness and compassion of a café owner who set out leftover food for us then hired us to sweep up, we survived.”
He handed the pocket watch to her. “Look out for more rattlers, Bri. And scorpions, too. They’re thick in this region.”
She didn’t utter a word when he turned and walked away, but he could feel her attentive gaze on him. Hud wasn’t sure why he had divulged that tidbit about his past. He never had before. Indeed, Mizz Bri was getting to him more than he cared to acknowledge.
Bri inhaled a fortifying breath as she watched Hud ascend the steep embankment. Sweet mercy, she thought as she hiked up her cumbersome skirt and tried to squelch the warm glow of pleasure as she sidestepped uphill. What sort of mystifying spell did that tawny-eyed Ranger hold over her? This time he had initiated their kiss and she had prolonged it. Then he had snatched her pocket watch as expertly as she had slid his pistols from his holsters.
Learning that Hud was a child of the backstreets made her entirely too sympathetic toward him. She could picture him with Benji, scouring for food to survive, struggling like the three orphans she had brought along with her.
“Well, damn,” she mumbled to herself. Not only was she suffering from this infuriating sexual attraction to the tough-as-nails Ranger, but now she was also impressed by how far he’d come from his hand-to-mouth existence in the streets of New Orleans.
Impressed or not, Bri reminded herself that this was a dead-end fascination that could only last a week at the most. After visiting her father, she planned to rejoin the theater troupe in The Flat then take the orphans to see the sights in Colorado—and then venture all the way to California. The boys would make fine traveling companions and they would discourage men from pestering her.
It was Bri’s dream to see the world, to escape the rigid confines of society that her mother had imposed on her the past few years.
When Bri returned to camp, the boys were working industriously. They had the campfire roaring and they were helping the Korns set up the Dutch oven. The cast members were unloading trunks from the wagons to roll out their sleeping gear. Several women headed down the creek to bathe.
She wondered if Hud would volunteer to stand guard over them. When Bri walked over to tease him about the possibility, he glanced curiously at her.
“Which actress was dallying with your fiancé?”
“Why do you want to know? So you can question her about the authenticity of my story of finding them together?”
He shrugged noncommittally as he watched the four women amble away.
“Or did you want to try your luck to see if Sylvia is as partial to Rangers as she is to politicians?” A ridiculous surge of possessiveness rolled over her and she wished she could retract the question—especially when Hud grinned rakishly.
“Jealous?” he teased.
To salvage her pride she gave an unladylike snort and said, “Don’t be absurd. The redhead is more than welcome to you. I could care less.”
She watched him focus on the buxom redhead, who paused to toss Hud a flirtatious glance. Apparently, Sylvia’s interest in Eaton had been a passing fancy because she looked Hud up and down—and found not a single thing she didn’t like about him.
Bri discovered that she had the same problem herself.
“There’s all the invitation you need, Romeo,” she declared. “If you want my blessing or permission then you have it.” Or so she tried to convince herself.
“One question,” he asked, staring thoughtfully at her.
“Ask away.”
“Why did you kiss me both times in the alley?”
Bri was reluctant to answer the complicated question. Her excuse was that she wanted to distract him and she didn’t want Eaton and the redhead to notice her when they ambled down the boardwalk. The reason was that she’d wanted to test her befuddling reaction to Hud. Plus, there was something deliciously thrilling about a secret rendezvous without consequences…until he realized who she was.
“Too personal to answer?” he prodded, refusing to release her from his probing gaze.
His comment tweaked her feminine pride again so she said, “Hardly. It was always about distraction and diversion. Plus, Eaton and the redhead were behind you on the boardwalk. I used you as a shield so he wouldn’t recognize me. I wanted to keep you quiet so they wouldn’t notice us.”
When he continued to scrutinize her for another long moment, she felt compelled to turn the tables on him to divert his attention. “Why did you kiss me down by the creek earlier? Or is that too personal for you to answer, Captain Ranger?”
He took a step closer, eclipsing the last rays of sunset and leaving her standing in his shadow. Bri was forced to tilt her head back to meet his amber gaze. She found herself staring at his sensuous mouth and she chastised herself severely for becoming hopelessly distracted. Curse it, she could feel the heat radiating from his muscular body and she remembered—with alarming clarity—his enticing scent, his tantalizing taste, his intimate touch.
“It was all about picking pockets,” he said in a husky voice that swept over her like a caress. “Why else?”
“Ellie?” Tommy called out, shattering the trance like broken glass. “Where shall we bed down for the night?”
“Yes, where shall we?” Hud murmured and grinned. The ornery scamp.
“You won’t be sleeping with us,” she was quick to assure him then called back to Tommy. “Close to the horses. They are always the first to know if trouble is lurking.”
When the boys trooped off to place their new bedrolls by the picket line of horses, Bri glanced back at Hud. “Anything else before I help prepare the meal? If not, you are dismissed, Captain.”
She took impish delight in watching him frown in annoyance. When he pivoted on his heels and strode off Bri breathed a sigh of relief. She made a mental note to antagonize Hud every chance she got. It seemed the only deterrent that prevented her from thinking about him as a virile, appealing man. And when that happened, she lost the good sense she’d been cultivating for twenty-three years.
“Are you okay?” Lelia Korn asked when Bri strode up beside her.
“The incident with the rattlesnake was a bit unnerving,” she admitted. So was my latest encounter with Hud, she added silently. “But I’m fine now.”
At least she would be if Hudson Stone kept his distance. Two miles should be about right, she decided. Any closer and she couldn’t trust herself alone with him.