High Country Hero

For the next four hours their route followed the west bank of the Umpqua as it looped and curved its way around stands of Douglas fir and house-high piles of granite boulders. She knew the river, loved every inch of its swift-flowing, emerald waters. She’d learned to swim near her uncle John’s place, where the river slowed and widened to lap a sandy beach.

She never liked swimming much. She preferred wading in the shallows, where she could see the stones on the river bottom and knew exactly where to place her feet.

Her mouth felt dry as a dish towel and tasted the same. Would that man never slow down? She was panting for breath, her mouth open; by nightfall her teeth would be black with trail dust.

Nightfall? She eyed the sun, just tipping behind the treetops on the ridge ahead of them. She’d never make it till nightfall.

“Mr. Lawson?” she gasped.

He twisted to look back at her but kept his horse moving.

Oh, the devil with the man! She reined in, brought the mare to a stop and reached for her canteen. She’d downed a single swallow of water when it was wrenched out of her grasp.

“You stop when I stop. Drink when I drink. Someone who’s been shot might not have much time.”

“I am going as fast as I can.” She’d like to fling the contents of the canteen in his face, but she’d be thirsty later if she did. Blast the man. The worst part of it was that he was right—a person with a bullet wound was looking death in the face.

He screwed the cap back on and handed over the container. “Let’s ride.”

Well, of all the… What if she had to urinate? Would he stride back into the bushes and yank up her drawers? The thought was so bizarre she laughed out loud.

He turned in the saddle and pinned her with a questioning look in those hard, gray-green eyes.

“It’s nothing,” she said quickly.

But what if her bladder were ready to burst? What would she have to do to make him stop?

She kneed the horse forward and studied the man’s back. Cordell Lawson wasn’t as easygoing as he appeared. He was driving himself hard and dragging her along with him. Her thighs burned. Her neck hurt from tipping her head against the sun. This was, she realized, a perfect example of mismatched traveling companions. She was human, and he was not.

The trail narrowed and began to climb. Halfway up the steep path she knew she couldn’t make it. Rocks jutted above her, and below, the river glinted silver. If the horse stumbled…

She drew rein and stopped.

Cord heard the horse’s steps cease. What now? He kept on, hoping she would resume her pace, but no sound came from behind him. Clenching his teeth, he turned his mount.

She had halted in the middle of the trail and was sitting there, slumped in the saddle, with that ridiculous feather drooped over her face. But her hands told him all he needed to know. She wore deerskin riding gloves, and while he couldn’t see her knuckles, he knew from the way she gripped the saddle horn that her hands would ache come sundown. Especially if she hadn’t sat a horse in—what had she said?—six years. And they’d been on the trail for a full seven hours. Hell, she wouldn’t be able to sit down for a week.

Of all the doctors in Oregon, why did he have to find her? She was prim and proper and saddle-green. Too slim and willowy to be very strong. And female. Very definitely female—moods and all. Probably enjoyed herself only once a year, at Christmas.

He’d bet she’d never taken a bath in the woods, either. In two days she’d smell like a rotting cabbage. If there was one thing that spoiled the pleasure of the mountains and the sky and the sweet, fresh air it was a partner who smelled bad.

For a long minute he sat still and watched her. Just when he thought maybe he ought to say something, she kicked her mare and it jolted forward.

She moved toward him, still bent over the saddle horn, her head down, not even watching where she was going. Her shoulders were hunched tight with exhaustion.

But she was moving. She had sand; he’d say that for her.

Chapter Three

Cord watched the exhausted woman pry her fingers off the saddle horn and lay the mare’s leather reins in her lap. For the last three hours, as they’d climbed the slope to where the trail leveled off at Frog Jump Butte, she’d hung on by sheer force of will, and her face showed it. Beneath the brim of that sad-looking gray felt hat her eyelids were almost shut.

He let loose an irrepressible snort. No wonder. She was fighting to stay awake, clinging to the hard leather pommel like she’d been glued there.

“Let’s make camp,” he called.

There was no response.

He dismounted and peered through the darkness at her form, still hunched so low in the saddle the purple feather in her hatband brushed the mare’s ear.

“You all right?” he ventured.

After a long silence, a gravelly voice drifted out of the shadows. “Do you always travel like this? Of course I am not all right. I’m half-dead.”

“Travel like what? You’re not half-dead. You can still talk, can’tcha? I hate a woman who exaggerates.”

She straightened, groaned and tried to swing her leg over the horse’s back to dismount. “I know your friend is in need of medical help, but you travel like someone is breathing down your neck.”

She gave up, hefted her bottom over the cantle and slid off the mare backward. When her feet hit the ground, she grasped the animal’s tail to keep from staggering and leaned her forehead against the mare’s hindquarters.

“Maybe someone is,” he said.

She just shook her head and made a small moaning noise.

Goddamn, was she crying? “I’ll build a fire.”

She lifted her head and took a wobbly step. “I would gather some kindling for you, Mr. Lawson, but I don’t think I can bend over. Who would be following you?”

He didn’t answer. Five minutes of scrounging and his arms were full of pinecones and dry branches. He kicked some rocks into a circle and dumped his load. As far as he could tell, she hadn’t moved.

“You can stand up all night if you want, Doc, but I wouldn’t advise it.”

“I will be seated when I am…able. In the meantime, I need to answer a call of nature.” She took another shaky step and grabbed the horse’s tail again.

Cord tossed three broken tree limbs onto his unlit fire and strode toward her. “If you were a man, you could pee right where you’re standing. Seeing as you’re not…”

He grasped her elbows and propelled her ahead of him into the scrub. “See that big huckleberry bush? Use that.”

He released her, and she swayed forward.

“Yes,” she murmured. “Thank you. I can manage now.”

He tramped back to the fire pit while she made rustling sounds in the brush. Out of courtesy he decided not to ignite the kindling until she’d finished. Firelight would illuminate the whole area.

He waited, stalked off into the woods on the other side of camp to do his own business, then squatted beside the fire and waited some more, his flint box poised and ready.

Nothing. Not one leaf rattle or scritch-scratch of twigs came from the direction of the huckleberry bush. An evening songbird started in, stopped, then resumed singing. What in blazes was taking her so long?

“Dr. West?”

There was no answer.

She couldn’t have stumbled off the edge of the butte. Hell’s bells, she couldn’t walk that far. What was she doing?

“Dr. West? Sage?”

To heck with her. He struck a spark and puffed his breath onto the thatch of smoldering pine needles. When it caught, he added more branches, then unloaded his saddlebag.

As he worked laying out his bedroll and the supper things, he listened.

The sparrow twittered on as if it was his last night on earth. A coyote yipped somewhere. But nothing sounded like a female doing her business behind a bush. He began to wonder about that split-up-the-front skirt she wore. Did it unbutton between her legs? Or did she have to pull it down and drop her drawers? Anatomically, women were at a disadvantage.

The songbird stopped abruptly, after which he heard nothing but the occasional spark popping from the fire. What in blazes was going on behind that huckleberry bush? Nobody took half an hour to pee.

“Sage?” He stood up. “Dr. West? I’m coming over.” His boots crunched through the bracken, managing to stop just before he tripped over her.

She lay curled up on her side, her hat squashed into the pine needles. Cord knelt beside her, checked her breathing.

Sound asleep. He suppressed a chuckle. Just one tuckered out, ladyfied lady. He’d bet she’d pulled up her drawers and then just fallen over.

Oh, boy. He’d have to wake her up for supper.

He strode back to camp, untied her bedroll and spread it out by the fire. He mixed up some biscuits, then opened a tin of beans and set it on a flat rock. Over it, close to the heat, he placed the tin pan with six lumps of sticky biscuit dough arranged in a circle, and one in the middle. No fresh water up here, so they’d make do with what was left in the canteens.

And whiskey. His mouth watered at the thought. He wouldn’t get drunk, just smooth out the rough places. It had been a long time since he’d felt this edgy.

She was still asleep when he went to get her. “Doc?” He nudged her shoulder with the toe of his boot. “Wake up. Supper’s ready.”

She groaned and pulled her knees up closer to her chin.

“Doc?” Aw, the devil with it. He went down on one knee, slid his arms under her and stood up. She weighed no more than a sack of sugar. Her long legs swung as he moved, but she didn’t wake up.

He laid her out on her bedroll and she opened her eyes and looked up at him. “Just what do you think you are doing, manhandling my person?”

Man, did she wake up fast! Her voice was clear as a cold creek.

“You fell asleep. I lugged you out of the woods for supper.”

She sat up. “Supper?”

“Beans and biscuits.” And whiskey.

“Oh?” She smiled and her whole face lit up, especially her eyes. In the firelight they looked like the purple pansies Nita used to grow. Big and velvety.

“You haven’t answered my question,” Sage said.

“Huh? What question?”

“Who is following us?”

Cord sent her a sharp look. A more single-minded female he’d never encountered. He thought he’d sidestepped the issue hours ago. “Nobody’s following us,” he said quickly.

“I don’t believe you.”

He leaned back and stared at her. “You know, I had a dog like you once. Used to get his teeth into something and wouldn’t let go.”

“I had a dog like you once, too,” she said with a sideways look. “He used to drop a ham bone at my feet and then bite me if I picked it up.”

Cord sat back on his heels and studied her. High cheekbones. Three or four freckles. A generous mouth, still rosy from sleep. Kind of an English nose. And those eyes. She was pretty, but too smart for her own good.

He switched tactics. “You like venison in your beans?”

“Is your real name Cordell?”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

She gave him a tired smile. “Nothing. I just wanted you to know I could do it, too.”

“Do what, cook?”

“No.” She looked straight into his eyes. “Change subjects when I need to.”

Oh, yeah. Sand and then some.

Sage eyed the pocketknife he slipped out of his jeans. He snapped it open with a flick of his long fingers, and she caught her breath. It looked as sharp as any scalpel she’d ever picked up, and when he pulled a leathery-looking strip of dried jerky from a dingy flour sack and carved off two-bit-size rounds, she began to breathe again. He grinned at her as if he knew what she’d been thinking and dropped them into the tin of bubbling beans.

“Is that knife really clean?” she said without thinking.

“Clean enough,” he responded.

“But we’re going to eat that! What about bacteria? Germs?”

“What about ’em? The heat’ll kill the puny ones, and this—” he dribbled in a healthy splash of whiskey “—will make the survivors happy.”

“I wasn’t thinking about the survivors. I was thinking about the ingesters.” She used the word on purpose.

“We’ll live.”

“And the germs won’t.”

“Life’s like that. Germ eat germ, so to speak. What are you so touchy about, Doc? You’re gettin’ your supper cooked, your toes toasted by the fire I built, everything but tucked in with a bedtime story.”

“I know.” She sighed. “I am grateful, Mr. Lawson. Tomorrow I won’t be so worn-out.”

“Sure you won’t,” he said dryly. “Here. Eat up.” He handed her a fork and a tin plate swimming with hot beans, topped by two over-browned biscuits. She stabbed one with her fork, but it slid sideways. She grabbed it with her fingers and bit into a corner. Or tried to.

“Who in the world taught you how to make biscuits?”

He shoveled a load of beans into his mouth. “Zack Beeler.”

Her fork clattered onto the plate. “The Zack Beeler?”

Cord’s black eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch. “You heard of him?”

“Everyone’s heard of him. He’s an outlaw! A bank robber and a murderer. I saw his poster in my uncle’s office when I was just a girl.”

“He’s also a fine trail cook. He taught me to make biscuits when I was seven.”

Sage stared at Cord. Just what kind of man was he? “Mr. Lawson, what is it you do for a living?”

“I’m a bounty hunter.”

Oh. Oh. “Is the individual who needs a doctor, um…wanted?”

“You could say that.” He dribbled a tablespoon of whiskey over his beans. “In a manner of speaking.”

Speechless, Sage watched him smash up his biscuits with the fork tines and scoop beans over them. An outlaw. She was struggling up this trail to treat someone from the shady side of the law? Someone who might possibly be—in fact, likely was—dangerous?

“Is this person your prisoner?”

“Not exactly. Close enough, though. Can’t move much with a bullet in the back.”

She picked up her fork, then set it down. She had to eat, had to keep up her strength. But suddenly the thought of beans and biscuits lost its appeal.

He cocked his head at her. “Something the matter?”

“Not hungry.”

“Scared, you mean.”

“Don’t put words in my mouth, Mr. Lawson.”

“Better put some beans in it, then. Long day tomorrow. You don’t eat, you won’t be much good.”

She sat back and digested his words, watching his hand move methodically from the plate in his lap to his mouth and back. She could deal with this, couldn’t she? Deal with him? A man she’d known a mere twelve hours? Scramble after him on a barely visible trail into the wilderness to treat Lord only knew who?

She set her plate of food on the ground beside her and tipped sideways until her shoulder met the bedroll, then drew her knees up, wrapped her arms over her stomach and shut her eyes.

His voice came from across the fire pit. “I know it’s tough. Hard riding when you haven’t sat a horse in some years. Steep trail. The river yet to cross.”

Her heart leaped. Cross the river? Would she have to swim?

“Maybe you’re afraid you’re not going to measure up?”

“I’ll measure up, Mr. Lawson.” She licked her lips. “But…would it be all right if I measured up tomorrow?”

The last thing she heard was the clink of tinware and his low chuckle.

Chapter Four

The next morning, Cord lay in his blanket, purposely not moving any part of his body, especially his head. How much had he drunk last night—a third of his stash? Half? He’d lay off when he’d got the doc up the mountain. In the meantime, he’d kill the thing that weighed on him any way he could.

He heard noises around the camp, but his eyes wouldn’t open. “What time is it?”

“Morning,” a female voice said. “Almost.”

He cracked one eyelid. “What are you doing up so damn early?”

“I am ‘measuring up,’ Mr. Lawson.” She waved a pan of fluffy-looking mounds under his nose. “Now these,” she announced with a note of satisfaction, “are biscuits.”

He inhaled and had to agree; they sure smelled like biscuits.

“Get up, and you can have some.”

He drew in another breath and smelled bacon. And coffee. Oh, yes, Lord. Coffee. Measuring up? Hell’s bells, she was saving his life!

He watched her move back to the campfire.

She seemed stiff. He noticed she didn’t bend over, just flexed her knees to reach down. He wondered how she’d managed to poke the coals into a cookfire.

She dipped, straight-backed, and turned over the sizzling bacon strips with a fork. The coffee simmered in the bean tin from last night’s supper.

“I see you found the supplies.”

“And your revolver,” she said in a neutral tone. “And your whiskey. Quite a lot of whiskey, in fact.”

Cord’s breath hissed in. “Didn’t pour it out, did you?” That’s all he needed, a temperance advocate on a cross-country ride.

“Certainly not. Whiskey is an excellent disinfectant.”

He rolled out from under the scratchy, army-issue blanket and stood up. Mistake. He shut his eyes against the pounding in his temples and dropped to his knees. Lord God, he’d done it again.

“Here.” Her voice came from somewhere close by, and the next thing he knew she was folding his fingers around a tin mug. “Drink it,” she ordered. “And don’t vomit.”

His stomach flipped at the word. I won’t. I can’t. Not with her watching. He brought the mug to his nose and inhaled. She might be a prim and proper lady, but she sure could make coffee. He slurped in a mouthful. She measured up just fine.

“Ready for breakfast?”

“No,” he growled.

“Your boots are warming by the fire.”

“Thanks.”

“Your shirt’s airing out on that tree limb.”

“Airing out?”

“It’s filthy,” she said, her voice crisp.

“I’m filthy. Haven’t had a bath since—”

She tsk-tsked. “Inadequate hygiene. We’ll bathe tonight. Assuming we camp near a stream.”

Cord let a long minute pass while he sipped hot coffee and tested his equilibrium.

“And another thing,” she began. “I do not think—”

“Hold it,” he snapped. He lifted his free hand toward her, fingers up. “Hold it right there. You sure as hell are measuring up. Any more and I’ll have to hand over my pants and let you wear ’em.”

“Well, that won’t be necessary I’m sure, Mr. Lawson.” She sounded pleased. “But now that you mention it, since you are wearing your pants, would you mind putting on the rest of your clothes before we eat? I am not used to sharing my meals with a half-dressed gentleman.”

“I don’t much care what you’re used to, Doc. And as for the gentleman part—”

“You needn’t explain,” she said, her voice matter-of-fact. “I am aware.”

Cord stalked over to the fire and stuffed his right foot into his boot. “Ouch! Goldarnit, it’s hot!”

Her eyes widened. “Don’t you wear socks?”

“Did you find any socks when you rustled through my things?” he growled.

“No. But I sleep with mine on, so I naturally thought…”

Cord glared at her. “Well, I sleep with mine off. In fact, I never wear socks. Or drawers, so don’t yank my pants off cuz you think they need ‘airing.’”

“Which they do,” she offered. There was a hint of laughter in her voice, but he was too mad—and too hungry, he realized—to care.

“My pants,” he said with as much dignity as he could muster, “don’t get washed until they need it, and that’s not until they can stand up by themselves.”

“Well, then. If the knees will still bend, perhaps you would like to sit down and eat some breakfast.”

It wasn’t a question, more like a softly spoken order, but the grumbling of his stomach made a response irrelevant. Jupiter, could she get under his skin! He noticed that she ate standing up.

The crisp bacon broke up in his mouth like little shards of sweet-flavored cookies, and the biscuits! Fluffy white tumbleweeds that melted on his tongue. He swallowed and nearly groaned with pleasure. “Who taught you to cook?”

“Billy West. He’s my father.”

Cord stopped chewing. “I don’t know who my father is. Could have been any one of four men, all of ’em outlaws.”

“Outlaws?”

“Only family I ever knew. My mother died having me. They fed me and clothed me until I was fifteen.”

“And then?”

His face changed. “And then I turned them in. They’d killed a Chinese woman and her baby.”

Sage opened her mouth to speak, then thought better of it. What brutes men could be. Some men, anyway. Her father and Uncle John were both wonderful men, strong and smart and gentle inside, where it counted.

She glanced at the man seated on the other side of the fire. What about him? A brute? Or a gentle man?

A dark whisker shadow lay over the lower half of his face. His skin was tanned the color of her leather saddle, his chest and back, as well. And he wore no drawers.

An irrational thought flicked through her mind. Could a man’s backside get suntanned right through his jeans?

He was a brute, she decided. A man who chased other men for money. A bounty hunter who would turn in his own father for a price. Hardheaded and hard-hearted.

Then why did he want to save his prisoner’s life?

She could feel him staring at her, asking a silent question. It took all her courage to meet his gaze. His eyes were hard. Calculating. And unusual. The gray-green irises were ringed with brown, as if they had started to be one color in utero and then changed to another before birth.

There was something undisciplined about him. Primitive, like a wild animal. A wolf—that was it. A hungry wolf. One who hunted alone.

She dropped her gaze to the tin plate in her hand. That fact didn’t exactly make him unacceptable. It made him dangerous.

* * *

Three switchbacks down Frog Jump Butte it started to rain. The cold, stinging droplets dampened the trail, then turned it into mud. The horses twitched their tails and stepped daintily along the precipitous cliff edge while Sage’s heart thumped.

She’d packed into the woods before with her father and Uncle John, but if it rained, the three of them would hole up in a cave or a tree hollow and wait it out. Camping trips when she was a girl had been for fun.

Now she was “all growed up” as her father put it, and it wasn’t fun. Not with rainwater sluicing off her hat and a sopping wet riding skirt clinging to her legs. The brown denim material made a swish-slap sound with every step the horse took.

As the morning wore on, the sky grew darker. Rain dribbled in rivulets off the toes of her boots, splashed onto the ground and made the already sodden trail even more slippery. She reached one gloved hand to pat the mare’s neck. “Good girl,” she murmured. “We will soldier on.”

Sage had picked up the phrase from her father, had used it at medical college when things had seemed insurmountable—dissecting her first cadaver under the eagle eye of three professors ready to pounce on a false move; fending off the rude, hurtful jests by her male colleagues when a patient happened to be female; even forcing herself to eat when she was so tired just opening her mouth took more energy than she could muster.

She had soldiered on. Hour by hour, day by day. More than her examinations and flawless oral presentations, her medical degree had come through dogged perseverance.

A little thing like rain might be cold and wet and uncomfortable, but it wouldn’t stop her.

But the river, when they reached it, did. It rippled deep green and turquoise around a cluster of water-smoothed gray boulders and a half-sub-merged fir stump.

“Why,” she said to the man who drew rein at her side, “did we climb up that butte yesterday only to unclimb it today? Why not just go around it?”