CHAPTER 13
It was a loco thing to do, and Denny knew it. She was too angry to do anything else, though. Whoever was hiding, she was going to teach him that spying on her was a bad idea.
She heard a startled yell as the buckskin crashed into the brush. A figure leaped aside, diving out of the way. In the sharply contrasting pattern of shadow and light cast by the trees, Denny couldn’t see the man very well, but she slashed at him with the carbine’s barrel. She wasn’t going to open fire without knowing who she was shooting at.
The lurker might have been surprised by the unexpected charge, but he recovered quickly. As Denny tried to wallop him with the carbine, his hand shot up and grasped the barrel, stopping the blow in midair. He wrenched at the carbine, and since Denny wouldn’t let go, she abruptly found herself being pulled out of the saddle. She yelled in surprise and dismay as she came crashing down in the underbrush.
The man loomed over her, still trying to wrestle the carbine away from her. From the ground, Denny kicked upward, but the man twisted so her boot heel thudded against his thigh rather than into his groin where she had aimed it. She writhed around, trying to get away from him, but all that succeeded in doing was knocking her hat down over her eyes so she couldn’t see.
She lashed out blindly with her other leg, and when her foot hooked behind something, she yanked on it as hard as she could. She heard a surprised curse, then more brush crashed as her attacker toppled, his legs swept out from under him by her swift move.
Denny rolled over. The wrist of the hand holding the carbine banged against a tree trunk with such force that her hand went numb for a second. That was long enough for the Winchester to slip out of momentarily nerveless fingers. Denny scrambled after it, but just as she slapped her other hand down on the stock, the stranger grabbed her from behind with both arms around her middle. He jerked her back away from the carbine and struggled to his feet as he hung on to her.
It was like trying to hang on to a wildcat, or at least she tried to make it as much like that as she could. She writhed and kicked and flailed, and as she drove an elbow back she felt it land solidly. The man started gagging and choking. The point of her elbow had gotten him in the throat and at least distracted him for a moment, if not worse.
Denny tore free, but instead of running she whirled around, lowered her head, and butted it against the man’s chest as she tackled him around the waist. His hat flew off, and the tackle knocked him off balance. As she drove as hard with her feet as she could, she forced him backwards. The two of them crashed through the brush and then out of it, into the open along the edge of the ridge. Denny kept pushing and never slowed down.
Suddenly, there was nothing under their feet. She had driven them both off the edge, and she let out a startled yell as she realized her mistake.
A split second later, they hit the slope, were jolted apart by the impact, and started to bounce and roll. The slope was steep, but it wasn’t a sheer drop or the fall probably would have killed them.
As it was, they tumbled like thrown-aside rag dolls toward the creek below.
Denny grunted and yelped as she banged into rocky knobs protruding from the slope. She tried to grab some of them to slow her fall, but her fingers slipped off. Sky and earth changed places with dizzying speed as she rolled, until finally she landed in the creek with enough force to drive all the breath from her body. It didn’t help that immediately after that, water splashed in her face and went down her throat. She came up coughing and spitting and gasping.
At least she hadn’t landed facedown and knocked herself out. She wasn’t going to drown. She sat in the cold, swiftly flowing water and lifted a shaky hand to push ropes of sodden hair out of her face. She probably looked like a wet rat, she thought.
That started her brain working again. She remembered how she had come to be in this predicament to start with, and anger blazed to life inside her again as she looked around for the man who had attacked her.
She spotted him about ten yards away from her. He was floundering around in the creek, too, with his back toward her. He seemed to be having trouble catching his breath.
She would give him even more trouble, Denny thought as she felt around under the water on the creek bed and closed her hand around a rock that was just about the size of her two fists clenched together. She pulled it free from where it was wedged in with some other rocks and lunged to her feet. She lifted the rock and splashed toward the enemy, vaguely aware that she hurt in a lot of places, but she was too mad to worry about that.
He heard her coming, of course, and twisted around to see her looming over him with the rock upraised, ready to stove in his skull. He ducked toward her so that as she struck, she fell over his back and sprawled face-first into the creek.
She jerked her head up out of the water and tried to turn around and get her feet underneath her again. He grabbed her wrist and wrenched hard enough that she cried out as she dropped the rock. She tried to punch him with her other hand, but he caught hold of that wrist, too.
“Stop it! Settle down, you . . . you hellcat!”
Denny’s chest heaved as she gritted her teeth and glared at him. “Let go of me, you son of a bitch!” she raged.
“That’s no way for a rich young lady to talk.”
She blinked water out of her eyes and stared at him, realizing that he wasn’t a complete stranger, although she didn’t know much about him. She knew his name, though. “Let go of me, Rogers.”
“Are you gonna keep trying to kill me if I do?” he asked.
“I’ll kill you if you don’t!”
“How do you figure on doing that when I’ve got hold of both your arms?”
She snarled. “I didn’t say I’d do it right now! But I swear, one of these days when you least expect it—”
“You can get in trouble threatening to kill a—” He stopped short.
When he didn’t go on, Denny demanded, “Kill a what? An insufferable, perverted sneak?”
He frowned in evident confusion. “What?”
“You were spying on me! What else would you call a man who skulks around to stare at young women?”
Rogers shook his head slowly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Miss Jensen.”
Denny jerked her chin to point toward the open area where she had been running the buckskin earlier. “You were up on the ridge watching me while I was over there about half an hour ago.”
“What were you doing?” He smiled. “Having a swim?”
Denny felt her face growing warm. “Oh!” and tried to pull her wrists free again. “Let go of me, blast it. You’re hurting me.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said, his face growing solemn. “But you knocked me off that cliff and then tried to brain me with a rock, so I’m not sure I feel like running the risk of letting you go.”
She breathed hard for a couple seconds, then ground out, “I won’t fight anymore. All right?”
“I have your word on that? Your word as Smoke Jensen’s daughter?”
“That means something to you?”
“From what I’ve heard about him, he’s a mighty honorable man,” Rogers said. “I figure that sense of honor might extend to his kids, too.”
“I give you my word,” Denny snapped.
Brice let go of her wrists. For a second she thought seriously about punching him anyway, then decided she couldn’t do that after she had given her word. He was right about that assumption, anyway, damn it.
“You realize we’re sitting here up to our, uh, waists in icy cold water, don’t you?” he said.
“Going numb, are you?”
“Well, I wouldn’t mind getting back on dry land.” He got to his feet, wincing. “Reckon my bruises are gonna have bruises by the time tomorrow morning rolls around.” He extended a hand to her. “Let me help you up.”
“Go to hell,” she muttered. She climbed upright, awkwardly and painfully. But she made it without any help from him, and that pleased her.
“Now, what’s this about somebody watching you from the ridge?”
“You were,” she said flatly.
Rogers shook his head. “No, I wasn’t. I rode up, found a saddled horse tied to a tree, and was about to look around for whoever owned it when I heard somebody coming. I pulled back into the brush to wait and see who it turned out to be. That’s the first time I laid eyes on you today, Miss Jensen.”
“You’re lying,” Denny insisted.
“Why would I lie?”
“Because you’re a low-down, good-for-nothing—” He held up a hand to stop her. “I reckon we’ve established that you don’t have a very high opinion of me. But even so, I’m not the sort of fella who goes around spying on young ladies. You don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to, but it’s the truth.”
She frowned at him for a long moment, then said, “You mean somebody else was sneaking around here?”
“If you’re sure you saw somebody, then yeah, there had to be.”
“I found some tracks up there,” Denny said, pointing to the top of the ridge. “I found where he tied his horse, too.”
“But you never got a good look at him?”
“No, I just saw some movement in the trees, enough to make me suspicious. I went back down the creek, forded it, and circled around on this side to try to find out who it was. Then I ran into you.”
“And you just assumed that I had to be the varmint you were after.”
“You don’t have any other good reason for being out here, do you?” Denny said. “This is Sugarloaf range, and the last time I checked, you don’t work for the Sugarloaf.”
“You object to people riding across your father’s ranch?”
“Unless they have a good reason to, I do.”
Rogers shrugged. “Fair enough, I suppose.”
“I don’t care if you think it’s fair or not. What are you doing here?”
His voice tightened as he said, “That’s my business. I can tell you this much, though—I mean no harm to you or your family.”
“I’m supposed to just believe that?”
“Like I said before, believe it or don’t, whatever suits you. But it’s the truth.” He took a breath. “Now, I need to get on about my business and let you get on with yours . . .”
Denny pointed to the top of the ridge again. “The problem is that’s where our horses are. It’s a long way back around if we have to walk it.”
Rogers regarded the slope for a few seconds and then said, “I reckon if we’re careful, we can climb this ridge. We came down that way, we might as well go back up. I can give you a hand if you want—”
“I’ve been climbing hills and trees and anything else that needed climbing since almost before I could walk,” she said. “Just stay out of my way and I’ll be fine.”
“Suit yourself, then.” He waved a hand at the slope. “Up you go.”
Denny glared at him and wanted to say something else but couldn’t think of anything. She turned toward the ridge while he began feeling around behind his belt. He suddenly seemed agitated about something and she heard him mutter, “Now where in blazes did that—?”
“Looking for something?” she asked.
“Yeah, but it’s nothing for you to worry about. You go ahead and climb on up—”
Denny was already looking around on the ground. A glint of something caught her eye, and before he could stop her, she reached down and plucked an object from the rocks at their feet. “Is this what you’re looking for?” she asked as she held out her hand with a deputy United States marshal’s badge lying on the palm.