Early Dawn Page 10

  “What?” he asked, scanning the trail behind her. “Did you see something?”

  Eden moistened her lips and tried to swallow. Her throat had gone as dry as parchment paper. If he wanted to destroy every wildflower in his path, who was she to argue? Had she learned nothing during her time with the Sebastians? The trick to surviving was to do as she was told and keep her mouth shut.

  “Nothing, I saw nothing,” she managed to push out weakly.

  “Nothing? You scared the holy hell out of me.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. It’s just—”

  He holstered the weapon and reined Smoky around to face her. “Just what?”

  Eden glanced at the clematis bells that his gelding’s back hooves were brutalizing. “Nothing. It was nothing.”

  “You screamed my name. You must have had a reason.”

  “I didn’t scream.” Why was it so infernally difficult for her to keep quiet? Joseph often said her tongue was tied in the middle and loose at both ends, and Eden couldn’t rightly argue the point. “I just wanted to warn you—” She broke off and tried to swallow again. “You, um, were about to let Smoky trample the clematis.”

  “Trample the what?”

  Eden inclined her head at the beautiful flowers behind him. “The sugarbowl clematis. They’re so beautiful, like little church bells, and you were about to ruin them.”

  He glanced over his shoulder and stared at the flowers for a long, tension-packed moment. Then, meeting her gaze, he rubbed a callused hand over his face and blinked as if he hoped the picture might change once his vision came back into focus. “Are you saying that you screeched like that to save some flowers? Sweet Christ, lady, I could’ve shot you!”

  Eden couldn’t blame him for being angry. She didn’t know what had come over her, only that something inside of her had twisted and snapped when she thought the clematis might be destroyed. An awful, choking sensation filled her chest, and suddenly she wanted to weep. His face started to swim, and she realized she was staring at him through tears. Even worse, her hands had started to shake so badly that she had to wrap them around the saddle horn so he wouldn’t see.

  His blue eyes narrowed on her face. “Are you okay?”

  Eden had rarely felt less okay. She was miles from anywhere with a stranger, her life hanging by a thread, her body bruised, battered, and defiled. She wasn’t sure why the trampled flowers had brought all of her suffering and shame roiling to the surface, but suddenly her emotions screamed for release. It took every shred of control she had to blink back the tears, squarely meet his gaze, and nod in response to his question.

  He stared at her for another long moment. Then he glared at the flowers again. As he turned his horse back up the trail, she thought she heard him mutter, “Son of a bitch,” under his breath. But at least he circled the gelding around the clematis instead of plowing right through it.

  As Eden followed him up the slight incline, she struggled to regain her composure. Until she knew for certain that Matthew Coulter could be trusted, she had to bury her feelings deep, keep a clear head, and be ready to defend herself should it become necessary. She could have herself a good cry later, when she knew for certain she was safe.

  As the endless day wore on, the craggy, snowcapped peaks of the Rockies sometimes looked so close that Eden felt as if she could reach out and touch them. To the casual observer, they appeared impenetrable, yet she knew firsthand that wagon trains, stagecoaches, horsemen, and locomotives had found passes through them. When the sun reached its zenith and began its slow, downward slide toward the west, she saw a timber wolf at the crest of a rocky ridge, its shaggy body outlined against the powder blue sky. Later as the horses picked their way down a treacherous, shale-strewn embankment, she glimpsed a cougar slinking along the tree line at the opposite side of a meadow.

  Her focus on her surroundings ended when Coulter suddenly rode down a muddy bank into a creek. The rocky streambed was slick with moss, and Eden’s mount had trouble keeping its footing. In order to prevent herself and the horse from taking a swim, she had to concentrate on shifting her weight to help the gelding stay upright. That made her ribs hurt worse, the pain so sharp she became dizzy. For a good five minutes, she wondered if Matthew Coulter had lost his mind, but then she decided he’d taken to the stream to hide their tracks, a smart evasive maneuver. Not that she found it all that reassuring. If Coulter had stolen her from under the Sebastians’ noses to exact revenge, he wouldn’t want them to be able to follow his trail.

  Matthew fully expected his female charge to complain about his decision to ride in the stream. The footing was perilous, and having been raised in a city, she probably thought he was either crazy or a glutton for punishment. But as she had from the start, Eden Paxton surprised him. Instead of protesting, she slid from the saddle to lead her horse over the rocks. He hated for her to get her clothing wet. When the sun went down this evening, the mountain air would grow colder than a well digger’s ass, and he didn’t want her to take a chill. Nevertheless, he couldn’t quarrel with her decision and soon followed suit, dismounting to help Smoky and Herman traverse the slick streambed.

  Walking backward much of the time, he had an opportunity to watch Eden with her horse. She handled the bay with an expertise that struck him as odd for a San Franciscan. How the hell had she acquired such skill with four-legged critters? Even more bewildering was her steely strength of will. She met every challenge with grim resolve. She’d been in the saddle for going on thirty hours straight with only a brief break last night and this morning. She had to be beyond exhausted, but she hadn’t asked him to stop a single time.

  Even more telling, she still hadn’t broken down and cried. She’d come close earlier, when Smoky had trampled the flowers. He’d seen the tears in her eyes. But she’d managed to blink them away and tamp down her upset, thank God. He was no good with weeping women. But the tight grip she kept on her emotions concerned him. A lot of men couldn’t have endured what she had and kept a stiff upper lip. He wasn’t sure he could have himself.

  Although her impractical boots made it difficult for her to maintain her footing, she spoke softly to the bay gelding, coaxing him over the rocks and soothing away his fear with gentle strokes of her hands. The animal whickered and grunted, almost as if he were talking to her. Matthew nearly smiled, an urge that had come to him rarely over the last three years.

  “Where’d you learn your way around a horse?” he called, raising his voice to be heard over the rush of the water and the clack of shod hooves on wet stones. “There can’t be much opportunity for a lady to ride in the city.”

  Sunlight glanced off her fiery curls as she angled her head to look at him. As their gazes locked, Matthew found himself thinking that he’d never seen prettier blue eyes. They struck such a sharp contrast to the mud he’d smeared on her face that he found it difficult to glance away. Olivia’s eyes had been brown, so he felt no sense of disloyalty for thinking Eden’s were uncommonly beautiful.

  “My father was a Virginian and raised horses before the war,” she called back. “I wasn’t born then, but my oldest brother, Ace, carried on the tradition after Pa died and we settled out west. As a girl living on the outskirts of San Francisco, I spent a lot of time in the saddle. Ace insisted on it.”

  Matthew glanced at her skirts. Wetness had seeped above her knees. If he didn’t get her out of the stream soon, she’d be soaked to the waist. “We’ll be able to get back on dry land here in a bit.”

  Matthew started watching for a rocky patch of bank where they might leave the creek without making any tracks. If possible, he wanted to prevent the Sebastians from finding their exit point.

  The icy rush of water dragged at Eden’s skirts, and her feet were freezing. Occasionally she saw Coulter scan the north bank ahead of them for an exit, but he kept bypassing places that looked perfect to her. It finally dawned on her that he was waiting to find rock so the horses wouldn’t tear up the earth.

&nb
sp; At one point, they came upon a deep pool that Eden guessed would hit her just below the breasts. Before moving through it, she took off the sheepskin jacket to keep it dry, knotting the sleeves around the bay’s neck and draping the tails over the saddle. A moment later, she was glad she had, because the water came clear to her armpits. The iciness nearly sucked from her what little breath she could manage with her broken ribs. Despite the drag of her clothing and the lack of solid purchase beneath her smooth-soled boots, she managed to get through the pool without too much difficulty and scrambled up a shale shelf to a shallower part of the stream.

  To her surprise, Coulter circled back and handed her Smoky’s reins. Like her, he’d removed his jacket and tied it around the horse’s neck. Without a word of explanation, he drew a short-handled net from his saddlebag and plunged back into the deep pool. At first, Eden couldn’t imagine what he was after. Water shot up in a spray around him. It wasn’t until the eddy cleared that she saw trout swimming around him, some of them a foot long and as thick as a man’s forearm. Coulter leaned sideways, swung the net deep into the ice-clear depths, and came up with two flopping fish.

  Climbing the shale shelf, he flashed a grin, his teeth glowing white in contrast to his dark whiskers. Now that the fish were out of the water, they didn’t look quite so large, but they were each sizable enough to provide a fine meal.

  “Supper!” he said as he looped the excess netting into a loose knot and hung the trout from his saddle horn. “I hope you like fish.”

  Eden pushed a shock of damp hair from her face. Just the thought of eating something besides leathery beef made her mouth water. “I do.”

  “Good. I don’t cook fancy but I cook plenty.”

  His wet clothing sucked tight to his skin, revealing the virile contours of his lean yet muscular body. Eden’s gaze snagged on his powerfully built chest, then trailed downward to his trim lower torso. When she realized she was staring, she forced herself to look away and suppressed a shudder. With the exclusion of her brothers, she wanted nothing more to do with men for a good long while, maybe never.

  As before, Coulter reverted to silence as he retrieved Smoky’s reins and led the way farther upstream. A few minutes later, they happened upon a patch of shale on the north bank and were able to leave the water. By then, Eden was so weary she could barely stand, let alone lift herself and the weight of her soaked clothing back into the saddle. Pain exploded in her side with each attempt. After she gave it two tries, Coulter dismounted and strode over to help. When he reached to settle his hands at her waist, she retreated a step. The thought of his touching her filled her with revulsion.

  “Don’t,” she said, her teeth clacking from the cold. “I can mount by myself.”

  He backed off and held his arms out to his sides. “I was just going to lift you up.”

  “I don’t need you to lift me up.” Eden stuck her wet boot back into the stirrup, bounced twice on her other foot, and made another valiant effort to swing up, but her quivering legs and arms wouldn’t cooperate, and the agony in her ribs made her feel as if she might pass out. “I can do it by myself. I can.”

  He said nothing when her third attempt went just as badly. Too exhausted to try again, Eden looped her arms over the saddle and pressed her face against the side of the smooth leather seat. “I can’t believe this,” she said. “I’ve been riding most of my life.”

  “Under ordinary circumstances, I’m sure you’d do fine,” he said in a low voice. “You’re just played out and need to rest for a while. Unfortunately, we’ve got a lot of miles to cover yet before it’ll be safe to stop for the night.”

  Not lifting her head, Eden nodded. “Just give me a moment.”

  He dug at the sandy loam with the heel of his boot. Through her lowered lashes, she noted the sharp, irritated jerk of his movements.

  “How about I just give you a leg up?” He bent forward and interlaced his thick fingers to create a stirrup. “Grab hold of the saddle horn and I’ll do the rest.”

  When Eden lifted her face from the saddle, she felt tears making tracks in the dry mud on her cheeks. She could only hope he thought it was water from the stream. As she met his gaze, she glimpsed what she believed was compassion in the blue depths of his eyes, but it vanished so quickly she couldn’t be sure.

  Grabbing the saddle horn with both hands, she placed her foot in the cradle of his fingers. With a powerful thrust of his legs and arms, he propelled her upward with such force that she nearly missed the saddle and went sailing off the other side. He caught hold of her arm at the last second to halt her flight but let go the instant she was safely seated.

  Untying the sleeves of the jacket from around the bay’s neck, he thrust the wad of sheepskin at her. “Put that back on. Soaked like you are, this mountain wind will cut you clear to the bone.”

  Eden was already chilled to the bone, but she lacked the energy to tell him so. He was even wetter than she was, water streaming from his jeans and seeping out through the seams of his boots. But if it bothered him, he didn’t let on.

  He waited until she’d donned the jacket. Then he handed her Smoky’s reins. Jabbing a thumb over his shoulder, he said, “Take the horses and mule over yonder to the grass and wait for me. I need to brush away our tracks.”

  Eden did as he said and then turned to watch as he cut a long branch from a Rocky Mountain maple. With long, rhythmic sweeps of his arm, he feathered away the horses’ tracks and his own until he reached her. He surveyed the results of his work, then nodded.

  “They’ll have to look sharp to know this is where we left the water.” He tossed the branch into a copse of red-berried elder and remounted his gelding, swinging into the saddle with an ease that she envied. “You ready?”

  Eden nodded and fell in behind him as he once again headed north.

  In the minutes that followed, Eden’s exhaustion took precedence over all her earlier concerns. She was so wet, cold, and miserable that she no longer cared if Matthew Coulter was a decent man or a horrible one. She just wanted to get where they were going so she could warm herself by a fire, devour one of the fish he’d caught for supper, and then sleep.

  After a couple of hours, her weariness abated somewhat and her thoughts came clear again. Something wasn’t right. She instinctively knew that, but as they rode up one incline after another and then dropped into the rocky draws on the other side, she couldn’t pinpoint what was troubling her. The terrain hadn’t changed except for the small copses of nine-brush, manzanita, and hawthorn that created a colorful understory in the stands of ponderosa pine. She saw the deep royal blue blossoms of larkspur, conical shoots of white blossoms called miner’s candle, and wild geraniums lovelier and more delicate than any greenhouse variety.

  As they topped yet another rise and the sun glared directly into Eden’s eyes, she finally figured out what had been bothering her. Earlier they’d been riding north. Now he’d changed directions and was heading due west. If, as he’d claimed, he was taking her to a town where she’d be safe, why had he suddenly altered their course? All of her senses went on alert.

  After what Eden guessed was about three hours, Coulter suddenly switched directions again and turned due south. She frowned in bewilderment but continued to follow him because she had no choice. Then, as daylight began to fade, they turned east and soon cut across their own back trail.

  At the sight of their tracks from that morning, Eden’s stomach clenched with fear. He wasn’t riding toward a town to get her to safety. He’d spent the entire day going in a huge circle! Oh, God. Sharpening her gaze, Eden recognized landmarks from that morning. Why had he brought her back here? It made no sense. Yet there was no denying that he’d cut back to their starting point. Frightening questions took shape in her mind. Did he mean to return her to the Sebastians? What if he wanted something from them and planned to use her as a bargaining chip? Eden couldn’t bear the thought of being mauled again by those horrible men, and she had no intention of allowing it to happen.<
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  She fixed her attention on the Winchester in Coulter’s saddle boot. If she could get her hands on that rifle, he’d be in for a big surprise. Battered and exhausted though she was, she wasn’t helpless. Raised in San Francisco, yes, but not the bit of city fluff that Coulter clearly believed her to be. Her brothers had seen to that. She needed no compass to find her way through these rugged mountains, and with a gun, she wouldn’t need Matthew Coulter or anyone else to help her reach safety, either.

  Once the thought took root in Eden’s mind, it wouldn’t depart.

  As the remaining light faded to a blue-gray duskiness, Coulter drew his horse to a stop at the bend of a stream and swung down from the saddle. “This is as good a place as any to make camp,” he informed her as he loosened Smoky’s saddle cinch. “I’ll take care of the animals, and then go fetch us some firewood.” He tipped his hat to her. “I promised you a hot meal, as I recall. I’ll get a fire going, find you some dry clothes, and warm your innards with some coffee.”

  “That sounds wonderful,” Eden replied woodenly.

  She watched as he unburdened the animals. When he’d wandered off into the trees with a small hatchet to collect wood, she hurried over to his saddle. Propped against the cantle, the Winchester slipped easily from the leather boot. Eden’s hands trembled as she checked to make sure the weapon was loaded. Yes. Relief flooded her. Holding the gun made her feel as if she’d been reunited with an old and trusted friend.

  With a skill born of long practice, she jacked a cartridge into the chamber, pressed her back to the rough bark of a ponderosa pine, and waited for her lying, treacherous rescuer to return to camp.

  Chapter Five

  Matthew had his arms full of wood when Eden stepped into his line of sight. With her enveloped in the oversize sheepskin jacket and her sodden skirts hanging in thick folds around her hips, he didn’t immediately notice that she was holding his Winchester to her shoulder and had the barrel trained on him. When realization dawned, he froze in his tracks. Though she was weak and shaky, her stance and the way she held the weapon told him she was as accomplished with rifles as she was with horses. She also looked ready to shoot if he gave her a reason.