Code of the Wolf Page 6

  But he was her responsibility. So she rode out with him in silence to the southwest quarter of the range, beginning the search for calves in need of branding. No words passed between them; she didn’t offer conversation, and he seemed content to concentrate on the work.

  He doesn’t want to know me any more than I want to know him, she thought. And yet, in spite of herself, she began to notice little intriguing things about him that broke her concentration and awakened a far from easy curiosity.

  First, there was the way he worked the cattle. She had to admit that Constantine was worth several men in terms of skill and efficiency. He was just as good as he’d implied, guiding his horse with his knees and hardly a touch on the reins, handling the beeves as if they were harmless little lambs.

  Ordinarily, branding required a minimum of three riders for each quarter of the range, and weeks of grueling work. But Jacob didn’t need any help at all getting the calves down, holding and tying them while she wielded the branding iron. In fact, he seemed to put very little effort into the work at all, and yet he achieved results that almost aroused her admiration.

  Then there was the way he treated her. Though they seldom spoke, he was invariably courteous when he addressed her, never attempting the slightest intimacy or asking a single personal question. If he saw her as anything but a working partner, he showed no evidence of it.

  She, however, could never be less than keenly aware of his lean, broad-shouldered frame, or the face she had been forced to concede was handsome in its own rough way. Nor could she pretend she wasn’t aware of her own body, even though she had long ago made it a habit to forget it was anything but a living machine to be fed and cared for as one would any valuable animal.

  The first night they made camp beside the well at the far west border of the property—one of several that, along with a natural spring, made Avalon so valuable. There was enough of the branding fire left to cook the brace of cottontails Constantine had provided, a welcome addition to the coffee, beans and biscuit makings Serenity had brought.

  When he’d left camp to go hunting, Serenity had been half-convinced that he’d gone for good. Maybe he thought his debt had been paid with a day’s hard work. The fact that he hadn’t taken his horse didn’t convince her otherwise; it just meant he wasn’t a horse thief.

  But when he’d come back he’d had the rabbits in hand and had laid them on one of the nearby rocks without comment. She had thanked him briefly, brushed aside his offer to cook the rabbits and set up the spit herself. While the first one cooked, the two of them shared not so much as a single word. Jacob sat very still, listening to the night sounds, alert but relaxed. Serenity only wished she could feel the same.

  When the first rabbit was ready, Serenity found herself offering it to him just to break the silence.

  “No, ma’am,” he said, meeting her gaze. “I reckon you’re entitled to it.”

  His easy refusal angered her out of all proportion to his words. “Because I’m a woman?” she snapped.

  “You’ve worked as hard as any two men combined. You need to keep up your strength.”

  And why should he care about her strength? Why bother with such compliments when she had never shown the slightest indication that she had any use for them?

  “You’re the one who’s been hurt,” she said.

  “I can wait.”

  He wasn’t going to back down, and she was too exhausted to argue. She hung the other rabbit on the spit and began to eat. She was far too hungry to be dainty about it, but Constantine didn’t pay the least attention.

  He accepted the second rabbit and ate with remarkable tidiness. When he’d finished, he picked up the battered tin plates.

  “We don’t want any coyotes bothering us,” he said with a slight, wry smile and walked out into the dark to wipe them clean in the sand. His words and that smile made it seem almost as if he was keeping some secret joke she wasn’t meant to understand.

  Her temper flared again, and she was forced to acknowledge that her emotions were out of control. All the feelings she had tried to master over the past six years were bubbling to the surface, and Jacob Constantine was the one who’d set them to boiling.

  But blaming him for her upset wouldn’t help her. She knew that her anger was a sign of her own weakness, a dangerous vulnerability, a painful reminder that she had yet to erase the brand Lafe Renier and his gang had left on her soul. As long as she carried that brand, she would be a prisoner to her past. And her pain.

  She had always known there was only one way to conquer that pain squarely: stare it in the face and spit in its eye. Unfortunately, she hadn’t yet found the means to put that plan into action.

  But there was something else she could do, here and now: refuse to give Jacob Constantine the satisfaction of knowing just how thoroughly he disturbed her. And she could learn as much about him as possible. If she understood him even a little bit, she would know how to deal with him, how to react, how to ignore him when it suited her. She would be able to defend herself.

  From what? she thought. But she shoved the thought aside and considered what question to ask first.

  “How did you become a bounty hunter?” she asked abruptly when he returned.

  She’d asked him a similar question before, and he’d rebuffed her. She was prepared for the same reaction this time, but he surprised her.

  “You’ve heard of the Texas Rangers?” he asked.

  “I lived in Texas as a—” She broke off, took a deep breath and started again. “I have heard of them.”

  Constantine pulled his hat over his eyes and stretched out on his back, supporting himself on his elbows. “I was a Ranger for ten years,” he said.

  Most people would have considered that something to admire, but there hadn’t been Rangers around when the Reniers had attacked Serenity’s home, killed Levi and her parents, burned the house and taken her away.

  She picked up a small stick and idly poked at the ashes. “What made you stop?” she asked.

  “It was good work, but the time came when it just didn’t suit me anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  He turned his head to look at her, his eyes glittering red in the firelight like a coyote’s. “Everyone changes,” he said.

  He returned his attention to the darkness beyond the fire, but Serenity had the feeling that he was listening intently to every breath she took. Gooseflesh crept up her arms.

  “Are you good at what you do, Mr. Constantine?” she asked. “When you’re not being ambushed, I mean?”

  “Jacob.”

  The suddenness of his reply startled her. She’d deliberately provoked him, but instead of reacting with annoyance or anger, he’d offered her his Christian name.

  Once she would have found such informality natural, as it had been among her kinfolk. But she knew she and Constantine could never be friends, let alone intimates. He must know that as well as she did.

  And yet to refuse his request would be surrendering to the very fear she rejected. She had no obligation to reciprocate with a similar invitation.

  “Jacob,” she said.

  He nodded briefly without looking at her. “Yes, Miss Campbell,” he said. “I am good.”

  It wasn’t just arrogance on his part. He was confident with good reason. She had seen how supremely competent he was, how at home in his own body, graceful and powerful at the same time. Never a wasted motion, like a wolf in pursuit of its prey.

  “How many criminals have you caught?” she asked.

  “As a Ranger, or a bounty hunter?”

  “Both.”

  “Maybe fifty or so.”

  It seemed an incredible number, but she didn’t doubt him. “How many did you kill?”

  His jaw set. “I don’t kill unless I have no choice.”

  “Even when someone tries to kill you?”

  “I defend myself like any man.”

  “You would have killed Leroy, wouldn’t you?”

  He gave h
er another of those long, flat stares. “If I had to. My aim is to take them in alive.”

  “What happens when you deliver a wanted man to the authorities?”

  “He’s tried by a judge and jury.”

  “Have you ever arrested an innocent man?”

  He looked away again. “Not that I know of, ma’am.”

  Ma’am. It was a safe word, a respectful word, but suddenly she hated it.

  “Serenity,” she said.

  Constantine—Jacob—was silent for a time. “It don’t seem right, Miss Campbell.”

  “You asked me to call you Jacob.”

  “It’s not the same.”

  “Because I’m a woman?”

  “That’s what you are, Miss Campbell, even if you don’t want to admit it.”

  She scrambled to her feet. “Not as far as you’re concerned, Mr. Constantine.”

  His mouth twisted in that familiar smile. “Don’t worry. I’ll stick to my side of the bargain.” His smile faded. “Maybe you have good reason to distrust all men and refuse to have any on your place. I just can’t help wondering what that reason is.”

  JACOB HADN’T MEANT TO ask such a direct and personal question. He should have discouraged Serenity’s curiosity about him as soon as she started to talk. He’d told himself he didn’t want to know anything more about her, but the longer they were together, the less true that seemed.

  He hadn’t lied when he’d said she worked as hard as any two men, and just as well. Her skill wasn’t in question; wherever she’d learned to handle cattle, she’d taken to the lessons like a dog to a bone. And she’d never asked a single favor of him, never expected him to take on dirty work she wouldn’t do herself.

  The fact was that she’d been easy to work with, and he’d had more than one assumption about female ranchers proved wrong—which only made his need to understand Serenity that much stronger.

  Now she stared at him, her full lower lip caught between her teeth, and he noticed again just how pretty she was. Fresh and clean, like a desert night.

  “We have discussed this before,” she said. “Does it really seem so strange to you that women might strike out on their own simply because they have the means and courage to do so?”

  Her response was much less defensive than he’d expected, which pleased him for no reason at all. He phrased his answer carefully.

  “There are easier ways to strike out on your own than to try running an outfit like this.”

  Serenity uncorked her canteen and took a long drink. “We don’t just try, Mr. Constantine. We succeed.”

  No easy answers, just as he’d expected. “You were lucky to get a place like this,” he said. “You have a spring here?”

  “Coming out of the Organs,” she said. “We also have two good wells.”

  “There are some pretty big outfits in the county,” he said. “The owners must envy what you have here.”

  “Their envy is no concern of mine,” she said, the ice returning to her voice.

  “They never give you trouble?”

  “What trouble could they give us?”

  “You’ve never been pressured to sell?”

  “We are capable of defending ourselves, Jacob. There are plenty of good shots at Avalon. Anyone who comes here looking for trouble will get it.”

  “You’ve had no problems with rustlers?”

  “None to speak of,” she said.

  Only because they’d been lucky, which didn’t make Jacob feel any easier in his mind. Even if the more powerful ranchers in the area didn’t find a way to move them off the land, some gang like Leroy’s was bound to see Avalon as a plump chicken waiting to be plucked, come in force, and then—

  He cut off the thought and took another tack. “If you’re having trouble with branding,” he said, “what do you do when you set up a drive?”

  “We supply cattle to Fort Selden and Fort Cummings. We manage very well on our own.”

  And they must leave the ranch pretty much undefended at such times, which seemed like sure suicide.

  Unreasonable anger gathered in Jacob’s chest. “You think you’ve found some kind of freedom here,” he said harshly, “but this peace won’t last forever.”

  She sprang to her feet. “You have no stake in our success or failure,” she said, her voice husky with emotion. “You won’t see any of us ever again once you leave.”

  Why did that simple fact make him want to argue with her? She was right. But he still hadn’t learned a damned thing about what drove her. He knew generally why these women had come here, but not what made her so wary of men, or why she would risk so much to prove she didn’t need them. She must have had a father, a brother, maybe even a husband. The thought of her having been bound to any man had a strange effect on his heart. It made him forget to be careful.

  “You saved my life,” he said. “That gives me some reason to care what happens to you.”

  She froze in the act of turning away, her face caught in a rare moment of vulnerability. “You don’t have to worry,” she said. “We know the risks. We live our own way and make our own rules. No one here has to be afraid…”

  She didn’t finish the sentence, but Jacob recognized how close she’d come to revealing something important about herself. She must have realized it as well, for she suddenly broke into a brisk walk and strode out into the darkness.

  Jacob could still see her. He knew she wasn’t in any danger, and she wasn’t angry or reckless enough to stray far from the fire.

  Still more than a little angry himself, he adjusted his saddle under his head, folded his arms and closed his eyes. Four weeks, at most, he reminded himself. Only four…

  He dozed for a while, half-awake as he listened for Serenity’s return. Only when he heard her soft footsteps approaching her bedroll did he allow himself to sink into a deeper sleep, though some part of his wolf senses remained alert.

  It was those senses that woke him first when the gun went off. He sprang up, shaking the sleep from his mind and body, and listened for the echo of the distant report.

  “What is it?” Serenity asked, her voice muffled as she sat up and pushed her blanket aside.

  Of course her human ears hadn’t heard it. “A gunshot,” he said.

  In a moment she was on her feet beside him, fully alert. “Where?”

  “Two, maybe three, miles to the east,” he said.

  Which would be somewhere in the cluster of what passed for foothills not far from the house. Serenity didn’t even ask how he’d heard a shot so far away. Her face went pale in the breaking dawn light.

  “Bonnie and Zora,” she said. Without another word, she buckled on her gun belt, ran for the horses and swung up onto her gelding’s bare back. She kicked the horse into a hard run, not waiting to see if Jacob would follow.

  He cursed under his breath, mounted his own horse and urged it after her. Serenity obviously knew she couldn’t push the gelding at a full gallop for three miles across the desert, but she never let him fall below a trot, and the horse was willing enough.

  Jacob’s own mount proved equally willing. Little by little, he pulled into the lead, knowing that Serenity could only guess where the shot had come from. He knew. Just as his nose and ears told him that Leroy and three of his men were waiting in ambush in one of the deep arroyos cutting east away from the Organ Mountains.

  There was no time to warn Serenity. He cut across her path, forcing her horse to turn with his. He aimed for a jumble of high rocks a dozen yards from the arroyo. Once the horses were behind the rocks he jumped down, grabbed Serenity around the waist and pulled her after him.

  Her fists pounded his chest in a drumbeat of panic. Her eyes were wild, though she didn’t make a sound. He wrapped his arms around her.

  “Be quiet,” he whispered. “There are men in that arroyo just waiting for us to stumble over them.”

  Her rigid body went still. “Leroy’s men?”

  She read the answer in his eyes. Her shoulders slumped,
and she went limp as the tail of a newborn calf. Just as he was about to release her, she jerked free and put a good dozen feet between them.

  “Don’t ever do that again,” she said, very softly.

  He ignored her warning. “Bonnie was working out here?” he asked.

  “With Zora.”

  He didn’t know who Zora was, but this wasn’t the time to ask. He was too busy keeping an eye on Serenity, who had pulled her rifle from its scabbard and moved to a point where she could see around the rocks to the lip of the arroyo. “How do you know Leroy is there?” she asked.

  He couldn’t very well tell her the truth. “I saw one of them stick his head up,” he said. He didn’t tell her that he smelled blood. He hoped it belonged to one of the gang.

  “I have to find Bonnie,” she said. “Zora can take care of herself. But Bonnie—”

  Her voice broke. She was sick with worry, and there was little Jacob could do to reassure her. “Miss Maguire struck me as a lady who can take care of herself, too,” he said. “They may have the men pinned in the arroyo.” He adjusted his gun belt. “Let’s just hope your friends don’t shoot at me when I—”

  “You don’t have to worry,” she said. Her face was as hard as one of the granite peaks rising above them. “I’m going out there myself.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” he said. “They’ll shoot you down as soon as you stick your head out. I know how to get around them. You cover me.”

  Before she could protest, he was running around the rocks, crouched low and ready to shoot. He heard Serenity’s feet crunch on the gritty earth behind him. He prayed she was only getting into position to shoot if one of Leroy’s gang spotted him.

  They didn’t see him until he was within a few feet of the arroyo, and then only because someone out of his sight nearly got him in the leg. He half fell into the arroyo, twisting like a cat so that he landed on his feet and was firing before his boots touched ground.

  There were four horses and three men crowded between the steep walls of the arroyo—Leroy, Hunsaker and Silas—and two bodies sprawled behind them, one male and one female. The man was Stroud, clearly dead, and the woman was Bonnie Maguire. She was lying on her stomach, very still, but breathing.