Early Dawn

by Catherine Anderson

  Eden’s heart caught. One of her brothers? She couldn’t see his face in the darkness, and his gruff whisper made it impossible to recognize the voice, but who else would be crazy enough to enter this camp and risk his life to save her? She nodded ever so slightly that she understood the warning. The next instant, she felt him sawing at the rope around her neck. When the rough hemp fell away, he leaned over her to cut the rawhide that bound her hands and feet.

  When Eden was finally free, he retrieved his Winchester and helped her to stand. Her legs had gone numb from lack of circulation, making it difficult to walk. When he saw she was having trouble, he shifted his rifle to his left hand, bent at the knees, looped a hard arm around the backs of her thighs, and tossed her over his shoulder. Still badly bruised from the pummeling from Pete’s saddle horn that first day, Eden’s stomach contracted against a stab of pain, and a knifing agony in her ribs quickly followed. It took all her self-control to stifle a scream.

  This wasn’t one of her brothers, she registered dimly. He wasn’t as tall as Ace but was loftier than Joseph, David, or Esa. So who was he, and why was he helping her? She didn’t dare ask for fear of waking the Sebastians. Not that she really cared what had inspired him to help her. She burned to get away. God existed, after all, and He had answered her prayers.

  The man moved with amazing silence through the brush until he reached a tethered horse and pack mule some distance from camp. After lowering Eden to the ground and waiting for her to catch her balance on tingling legs, he fished in his saddlebag and handed her what felt like a shirt and sheepskin jacket. The canopy of the trees around them blocked most of the moonlight, making it difficult to tell for sure what he’d given her.

  “Get those on and sit tight until I get back,” he said softly.

  Peering at him through the blackness, Eden still couldn’t make out his face. She wanted to ask where he was going, but her vocal cords were so bruised from the noose, she couldn’t get the words out.

  As if he read her mind, he added, “I’ll get you a horse and scatter the others.”

  Eden clutched the clothing to her breasts. Though this man was a complete stranger, she didn’t want him to leave her. Her voice little more than a croaked whisper, she cried, “What if they wake up? They’ll shoot you, sure as the world.”

  “They won’t wake up until the horses take off. By then, I’ll be riding back this way, hell-bent for leather.”

  He disappeared into the darkness. Eden donned the shirt and jacket he’d given her. Then, clasping her throbbing ribs, she stood near the horse, terrified that she would soon hear shooting.

  Matthew desperately wanted to open fire on the Sebastians when he got back to their camp. Only concern for the girl’s safety forestalled him. He believed he could hold his own against the five men, but what if something went wrong? If he were hurt, she would pay the price. He couldn’t take that chance, not with her life hanging in the balance. Once they reached safety, he would double back. If luck was on his side, he’d be able to pick up the Sebastians’ trail again.

  Hating that he couldn’t kill the men he’d been tracking for so long, Matthew saddled a horse for the girl, counting on the rush of the night wind through the trees to drown out the sounds he made. Then he mounted up and followed the high line, slashing the reins that anchored the remaining equines to the tautly stretched rope.

  “Hee-haw!” he yelled, slapping rumps and waving his hat.

  The horses reared and then bolted every which way. To make sure they kept running, Matthew drew one of his Colts and fired three shots into the air. Goal accomplished. The animals would run now until exhaustion made them stop.

  The ruckus brought the Sebastian brothers reeling to their feet. Still sloppy drunk, they staggered about for a second, clearly confused. All Matthew needed was that second. With a sharp dig of his boot heels, he urged the horse beneath him into a flat-out gallop, intent on reaching the girl and getting her out of there as fast as he could.

  When he arrived at the clearing where he’d left her, she was trying to mount Smoky, who kept sidestepping so she couldn’t get her foot in the stirrup. Anger surged through Matthew when he realized she was trying to make a run for it. If the horse had cooperated, she would be long gone by now.

  At his approach, she whirled to face him, her eyes narrowed to peer at him through the shadows, her sunburned face pinched with fear.

  “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” he demanded.

  She clamped a slender hand over her side. “You scared me half to death.” Her voice was still hoarse and strained. “I thought you were one of the Sebastians. When I heard the gunfire, I thought . . . I thought they’d killed you.”

  Matthew swung down from the saddle. “It was me doing the shooting. I told you I needed to scatter their horses. Lucky for you, Smoky is a one-man horse and won’t let anybody but me ride him. You’d be in a hell of a fix if you got lost out here.”

  He caught her at the waist and lifted her onto the back of the stolen gelding. She gasped as if his hold caused her pain, but there wasn’t time to focus on that. He retreated a step and nudged his hat back to see her better. His sheepskin jacket nearly swallowed her. She’d rolled up the sleeves to free her hands, creating pillows of leather and fluff around her delicate wrists.

  “One thing,” he said softly. “If you want to make it out of this alive, you’ll do what I tell you, when I tell you. Are we clear?”

  “Perfectly clear.”

  With a curt nod, he climbed on Smoky, grabbed the mule’s lead rope, and called softly over his shoulder, “Let’s ride!”

  He set out at a fast clip, glancing back over his shoulder only once to make sure the girl was following him and could handle her mount. To his surprise, she rode as if she’d been born in the saddle. He thanked God for that, because it promised to be a hair-raising night.

  Who was this man who had plucked her from the arms of death? As Eden followed him through the moon-washed darkness, she asked herself that question countless times. The howl of the wind made it difficult for them to talk, but he could have at least given her his name. His failure to do so worried her. She couldn’t see him clearly enough to tell if he was clean-cut or a no-account. What if he was another outlaw? Maybe he had an ax to grind with the Sebastians, and stealing her from them was his way of getting even.

  He set a bone-jarring pace that sent pain shafting through her body, especially her ribs, making her wonder if the toe of Pete’s boot had fractured some bones. No matter. Broken ribs were painful, but they didn’t usually prove fatal. All she could do was clench her teeth, hang on tight to keep her seat, and pray her rescuer didn’t turn on her once they got safely away.

  An hour into the journey, Matthew began to regret his harsh manner with the girl. God only knew what trials she had endured, and he’d had no business getting angry because she tried to run off. If he’d been in her shoes, he probably would have done the same. She didn’t know him from Adam. She must have been scared half out of her wits when she heard the gunfire. He might have at least tried to reassure her.

  When he noticed that she was lagging behind, he decided it was safe to slow the pace for a while. The Sebastians wouldn’t be able to find all their horses until dawn, if then. Spooked equines could run for miles before they finally stopped to rest, and he figured the gang’s horses, abused more often than not, had stronger reasons than most to go as far as possible. The way Matthew figured, he and the woman had a good head start. He also had a few tricks up his sleeve that would throw the Sebastians off their trail, most of which he’d learned from them, the rotten sons of bitches.

  When the girl drew abreast of him, Matthew shifted in the saddle to look at her. Words had never come easily for him, and after three years on the trail with only his animals for company, they came harder now. He jerked off his hat, pushed his hand through his hair, and then plopped the Stetson back on his head again.

  “I, um, shouldn’t have jumped down your thr
oat back there. It’s just . . . I don’t like anybody else messing with my horse.”

  Her voice wasn’t quite as rough now. “If I hadn’t heard the gunfire, I wouldn’t have tried to run. If something had happened to you, what was I to do, wait there until the bastards found me? I’d rather take my chances in the wilderness.”

  Her language brought Matthew’s head back around. It wasn’t often he heard a lady use the word bastard. He’d met this girl’s mother, if only briefly, and she’d been dressed like a queen. It took money, and a lot of it, to afford fine clothing and hats bedecked with gewgaws. This girl came from wealth, or his name wasn’t Matthew Coulter. Hell, she’d probably even gone to one of those fancy schools where young females got finished, whatever the hell that meant.

  As if she guessed his thoughts, she looped an arm around her middle and lifted her slender shoulders in a shrug. “I have four older brothers. They don’t always keep their mouths clean.”

  A tension-packed silence fell between them. Matthew sensed that she was afraid of him, and he wasn’t sure how to ease her mind. Telling her what a fine, upstanding fellow he was probably wouldn’t work. She had no way of knowing whether his word was good, and he felt disinclined to talk himself blue in the face trying to convince her.

  So far, she hadn’t shed a single tear. One arm locked around her middle, she sat straight in the saddle, shoulders back, chin lifted. After all she’d been through, her behavior struck him as strange. He had a mother and sisters, and they were as strong as women came, standing fast beside their menfolk, no matter what. But in a situation like this, they’d be sobbing their hearts out. Not this gal. If he hadn’t known better, he might have thought nothing bad had happened to her. Earlier, when he’d watched her by the fire, he’d figured her to be in shock. Maybe she still was. When things got too terrible to face, people sometimes slipped into a stuporlike numbness.

  “You all right?” he couldn’t stop himself from asking.

  She cut him a sharp glance and then fixed her gaze straight ahead again. “Of course I’m all right. I’m alive, aren’t I?”

  She nudged her mount into a trot, forcing Matthew to increase his speed to stay abreast of her. Oddly, her avowal did little to ease his mind. Such steely self-control wasn’t natural. He could only hope she didn’t start thinking about what they’d done to her and suddenly fall apart farther along the trail. The last thing he needed was a hysterical woman on his hands.

  In truth, Eden wasn’t all right. The pain in her ribs exploded into agony every time she took a deep breath, and a horrible shakiness in the pit of her stomach made her feel as if she’d swallowed a handful of jumping beans. Tears burned at the backs of her eyes, and she yearned to cry. Only a fear that she might never be able to stop made her cling to her composure.

  Besides, losing control in front of a total stranger went against her every instinct. Never show weakness or fear to the enemy. Ace had driven that tenet of survival into her brain with merciless repetition. If she started to cry and couldn’t stop, her rescuer might see her as a spineless, pathetic creature lacking the courage or strength to defend herself. If he was a no-account, such an opinion of her might encourage him to boldness and possibly bring out his mean streak.

  Eden didn’t like feeling so vulnerable, but facts were facts. Her body was about to give out on her. She’d been on starvation rations for five days. She felt fairly certain that Pete had broken at least two of her ribs. With her physical endurance tapped nearly dry, all she had left was her intelligence. She could not get weepy. She could not show weakness. Miscreant men were like dogs: If a victim rolled over on its back and showed its belly, they went for the jugular.

  So she kept her gaze fixed straight ahead, endured the pain in her side, and held her emotions in check, ignoring the lump in her throat and the fear that sent shivers up her spine. What if? A dozen questions circled, all starting with those two words. What if the Sebastians’ horses had returned to camp? What if the brothers were hot on their heels even now? What if her rescuer suddenly turned on her?

  Feeling alone and frightened had come to seem normal to Eden over the last five days, but, oh, God, how she wished her brothers would suddenly appear up ahead of them. She imagined Ace’s strong arms enfolding her in a hard hug, how she would love to hear David’s deep, reassuring laugh. She would feel so safe with her brothers all around her. With the Keegan/Paxton tribe to defend her, no one would dare hurt her again.

  But her brothers didn’t appear, and though Eden tried, she couldn’t conjure them up. She was alone with a man who might be a thief, murderer, and rapist, and more of his ilk could be closing in fast.

  When dawn finally broke, Eden was appalled when she finally could see her rescuer. He had the look of a saddle tramp, his leather jacket stained with sweat and ground-in dirt, his tan Stetson battered and filthy. He also had a lean, razor-sharp look about him, as if he had survived for months on dried meat, death, and little else. He was edgy as well, glancing frequently over his shoulder and scanning the slopes at each side of the trail, as if he expected to be shot in the back at any moment. Clearly, danger had been his constant companion for far too long.

  A scruff of sable brown whiskers covered the lower part of his face, telling her it had been days, if not weeks, since a straight razor had touched his jaw. A jagged scar angled from the shaggy line of his beard across his lean cheek to the outside corner of his left eye. Another scar bisected his left eyebrow. But what she found most frightening were his eyes. They were the deep azure of a summer sky on a clear, hot day, only they looked more like ice chips, chilling her blood when he stopped his horse and turned in the saddle to stare at her.

  “This looks like as good a place as any to stop for a rest.” He inclined his head at a frothy stream that flowed through a nearby cut of rocks in a stand of ponderosa pines. Rocky Mountain maple and sandbar willows peppered its moist banks. “The horses could use a drink, and so could we.”

  As he spoke, the left corner of his mouth remained still, as if that side of his face had been paralyzed by the injury that had scarred him so badly. Ace had a similar affliction, compliments of a bone-shattering blow to his cheek from a rifle butt when he was only a boy, but never in Eden’s recollection had her eldest brother looked so disreputable.

  Clenching her teeth against the pain in her side, Eden twisted to look behind them. “I don’t mind stopping for water, but I don’t need to rest. What if the Sebastians are right behind us?”

  He swung down from the saddle. “They aren’t. And I don’t care whether or not you need to rest. I’m stopping for the horses and mule. Unlike the Sebastians, I don’t believe in running my animals to death.”

  “How can you be sure they aren’t right behind us?” she asked.

  “Because I scattered their horses to hell and gone, and we’ve been riding steady ever since.” He drew off his hat to dust it on his denim pant leg. Had it been clean, his dark brown hair might have hung straight as an arrow to his shoulders, but instead it had separated into stiff, oily shanks, almost as greasy as his jacket. He glanced up at her. “We won’t be staying here long, if that’s your worry. I just want to get the weight off the horses’ backs and let them take a breather. You need help down?”

  Eden had endured being touched for five long days. She’d get down by herself or die trying. With shaky hands, she grabbed the saddle horn, using it for balance as she dismounted. Supporting her weight with her arms sent a white-hot pain lancing through her ribs that made her light-headed. When her legs felt steady enough to support her weight, she stepped away from the gelding. “You can’t be sure their horses didn’t return to the camp.”

  “After firing those shots, I’m fairly sure.” He turned his back on her and began unsaddling Smoky. “Of course, nothing’s certain in this life, unless you count being born and dying. Everything in between is a gamble, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a damned fool.”

  Just what Eden wanted to hear. She began loosening h
er gelding’s saddle cinch.

  “I’ll get that,” he said over his shoulder. “A little slip of a thing like you shouldn’t be hefting a saddle.”

  Eden was tall for a woman and didn’t consider herself to be a “little slip of a thing.” Even in San Francisco, Ace had insisted on having a stable, and he’d left Eden’s and Dory’s mounts behind when he moved to Colorado. She’d been saddling and unsaddling horses most of her life. Not on a regular basis, of course, because a stable hand usually did it for her. But in the event she had no help, her brother David had taught her how to swing the weight of her riding gear without much effort. Despite the fact that doing so now would set her ribs to throbbing, she was determined to handle the task by herself so she wouldn’t appear helpless.

  “I can do it.”

  He swung his saddle onto the grass and strode toward her. “I said I would get it. You’re to do what I say, when I say it. Remember? The last thing I need right now is for you to hurt your back. If you can’t ride, we’ll be in a hell of a fix.”

  Unaccustomed to being treated like a child, Eden started to argue, then thought better of it. She knew nothing about this man. If she angered him, he might retaliate physically. “Fine, have it your way.”

  “I will.”

  She stood aside, watching as he unsaddled her mount. To her wary eyes, his hands looked as wide across the backs as laundry paddles, his fingers long and thick, his knuckles leathery from exposure to the elements. He moved with a catlike grace, his lean body powerfully muscled, each task executed with forceful strength, purpose, and an economy of movement. No stranger to work-hardened males, Eden knew without asking that he’d done grueling physical labor most of his life, developing the work ethic of a full-grown man long before puberty, just as her brothers had. Sadly, that knowledge didn’t comfort her. Even no-accounts had to work in order to survive, especially out on the trail.