"Indians don't own property," Sloan explained impatiently. "They don't understand the concept. Hell, the Spanish had a hard enough time with the concept of ownership. They just figured there was enough land out here for everybody, and they all went their happy way. We live in a modern world now. We know things can't be done that way. That's why we have deeds and surveys and courts of law to back up a man's claim to ownership. The Indians never established ownership in any legal manner."
She sent him a sharp look. "Fine, Mr. Lawyer. And I suppose if the Chinese sail over here and take over the country and decide all the land belongs to the government and not to individuals, you'll say that's the modern way and agree to it."
She stuck her nose up in the air when he gave her that exasperated, male what-are-we-going-to-do-with-the-dumb-female look.
"The Chinese aren't going to take over the country," was his stoic response.
"I bet the Indians said the same thing," she muttered under her breath.
"I heard that. They fought and lost. Conquerors always have their choice of land. History speaks for itself."
"William the Conqueror preferred his soldiers to marry into Saxon families and claim property that way. It was much more effective than ripping noble families out of their homes and sending them out to foment trouble."
Sam thought she noticed a look of interest on his face, but she refused to turn and look at him squarely. It was scarcely a triumph when a man finally discovered she had brains.
"I'll go find an Indian princess and marry her, if that makes you happy."
She was trying to come up with an appropriately sarcastic reply when the sound of gunfire split the chilly morning air.
Sam dropped to the side of her horse, clinging to its neck, and raced for the cover of the nearest rocky overhang.
Chapter Nineteen
Even though he'd been listening for it, the gunfire startled Sloan. He'd become entirely too engrossed in conversation with Little Miss Spitfire. When he saw her drop to the side of her horse, his heart literally caught in his throat, and he chased her down the trail.
His heart was already beating faster than normal by the time Sam reined the damned mare in beneath an overhang and slid to the ground, pulling her rifle from the scabbard in the same motion. Sloan had a brief fantasy of being gunned down by a half-pint female before realizing she was doing precisely what he would have done: taking cover and bringing out her weapons before scouting the danger.
If the shot had been meant for him, the killer had lost his opportunity. Colt in hand, Sloan slid to the ground and found a niche behind a boulder. The shelter Sam had chosen was perfect for covering the path they'd left behind them. Anyone coming down it would be spotted instantly. It was a pity he couldn't say the same for anyone coming up it.
"Stay down," he hissed when Sam peered over her shelter. "If they're coming from in front of us, we won't see them until they're on us."
She settled further back against the rock cliff and checked her ammunition. "Sounded like it came from behind to me. I didn't hear any bullet go by me, though." She gave him a curious look. "You expected this, didn't you?"
"I was prepared for it, yes." Sloan kept a grim eye on the trail ahead. He thought he saw movement in the evergreens just beyond the bend they had passed not too many minutes before.
"That's the second time someone's shot at you since we've been here. I suppose the fire was a different attempt? Or was that one an accident?"
She was entirely too sharp for her own good. Sloan scowled. "It wasn't any accident. Somebody set kindling and kerosene-soaked rags on fire in the room over my office, probably figuring I'd asphyxiate if nothing else."
Asphyxiate. That was a good word. It wasn't the kind of word uneducated men would use, however. Schools in Boston must teach fancy things, Sam surmised. "You've either got the luck of the Irish or an extremely incompetent enemy."
"I'm not Irish."
She hadn't thought he was. She checked the trail and caught the flash of something silver up above. She kept her rifle aimed in that direction.
"Don't shoot unless you see who it is. Joe's up there somewhere."
Well, that explained one or two things. Sam gave him a disgruntled look. "You could have told me you were baiting a trap."
"I could have been baiting it for you."
He didn't even turn and look at her when he said that. Damn, but he was a cool character. He was planning on bedding her even when he thought she might be trying to kill him. There ought to be names for men like him. Bastard was the only one that came to mind.
A minute later Joe came loping down the trail, signaling with his thumb for Sloan to follow him. Sloan holstered his Colt, picked up his rifle, and started out of the shelter. Sam came after him.
He turned and pointed back to the rocks. "Stay there."
"Says who?" Sam skirted around him, checking on her high-strung horse before mounting.
"Damn it, Sam, there could be more of them out there. Get back where it's safe." Sloan caught her reins and glared up at her.
"Unless Joe is out to kill you, I doubt that. I'm not some helpless female you have to feel obligated to protect, Talbott. I take care of myself." She shifted her weight and sent the mare rearing at her reins, forcing Sloan to drop them.
Why argue with the fool female? It wasn't his concern if she got herself killed. But he kept his rifle carefully in hand as he rode behind her, his gaze searching every possible hiding place.
Joe waited in the road they had just come down. Off to one side sprawled a dark object which didn't fit the surrounding landscape. Sloan knew what it was. He wasn't fully certain Samantha understood. Again, he tried to cut her off, keeping her to the road and away from the gruesome sight.
This time, she didn't try to get ahead of him. Rather than dismounting to get a better look, she stayed on her horse, keeping it prancing restlessly on the path. From her expression, Sloan gathered she had already figured out what she was looking at and wasn't any too happy about it.
"He was aiming between those two rocks," Joe said, gesturing toward the broken chunks of granite lining the cliff's edge. "You can see the trail below from there. In another minute you and the girl would have been in his sights."
Sloan got off and walked over to examine the body. The man was dead. There wasn't a thing he could do for him now. He gave Joe a hard look. "You didn't have to kill him. I would have liked to ask a few questions."
The wiry gunslinger bristled visibly. "He turned a gun on me. I make a habit of shooting anyone who turns a gun on me."
Sloan didn't question that. When he wasn't drunk, Joe was good at what he did. He hadn't survived this long playing by the rules of civilization back East. Sloan knelt beside the body and searched his clothes. "He's one of the millworkers, isn't he? What in hell did he have against me?"
His search turned up a few coins and bills, a lint-covered horehound, a packet of tobacco, and a small leather folder containing a faded daguerreotype of a woman and a wanted poster. He unfolded the poster while Joe answered.
"Not a thing that I know of. We just hired him back in December. He wasn't much of a worker."
Sam dismounted and Sloan wandered in her direction. He had to give her credit for keeping her mouth shut when it mattered. He handed her the poster. Joe couldn't read.
"Wanted for stagecoach robbery." Sam raised her expressive eyebrows as she scanned the description, then glanced over to the body on the ground. "Five-nine, weight one-eighty, sparse brown hair, mustache, tattoo on right hand." She looked expectantly at Joe.
He lifted the corpse's cold right hand and showed it to her. "Tattoo. It fits."
Sloan gave a grimace of disgust. "A two-bit thief. That's too easy. You're telling me that this mongrel wanted to kill me just to rob me? He'd have done better to wait until I went to bed and just taken the blasted saloon safe."
Still staying a distance from the body, Sam patted her horse's neck. Softly, she said, "He could have been pai
d."
Both men turned to look at her. She shrugged. "Back where I come from, we've got men like that. For a price, they'll gun down whoever you want dead. When the law gets too close, they move on, but they're usually pretty careful."
Joe frowned. "He didn't spend money like he had a lot. Suppose whoever might have hired him wouldn't pay until the job was done."
Sloan made a gesture of disgust. "I don't want to hear about it. Haul him back to town, ask questions, and get him buried. If you hear anything important, you know where to find me."
Joe didn't look particularly happy about those orders. "There could be more where this one came from." He glanced in Sam's direction. "You're risking more than your own neck this time."
"I can handle myself," Sam insisted quietly.
At Joe's doubtful look, Sloan said, "I'll look after her. I don't think there'll be any others down here, though. I think we've got the one we wanted."
"You'll be at the Regis, then?" Joe still didn't look satisfied.
Sloan held back his grin, though he knew his lips twitched from the effort. He'd be at the Regis all right, with a woman in his bed for twenty-four pleasurable hours. They'd be even more pleasurable now that he knew he wouldn't have to constantly look over his shoulder. He gave Sam a glance. Her sour look said she had gathered the drift of his thoughts. His mouth twitched a little more. This just might be the best time he'd had in a long time.
"The Regis," he confirmed, swinging back on his horse. He couldn't get there soon enough.
As Sam mounted, Sloan pushed back his hat and offered, "Thanks, Joe. I owe you one."
"You owe me a hell of a lot more than that," the older man muttered gruffly.
That was probably so, but he didn't mean to stand around and argue it. It was a little difficult to put a price on saving someone's life. Sloan nudged his horse toward the trail and Samantha.
He'd spent the morning trying not to look at her, but he felt like indulging himself right now. Her hair had grown longer these last few months, and it sprang from beneath her hat brim with a life all of its own. He wondered what it would feel like when he crushed it between his fingers. She set her horse into step beside him, so it was a little difficult to admire thick dark lashes and baby blue eyes, but he could appreciate the pert tilt of her nose.
But it wasn't precisely her face that held Sloan's interest at the moment. It was the contents of that figure-hugging blue cotton shirt beneath the open coat. He could barely keep his horse on the path for glancing over there to see if he was seeing correctly or if his imagination had taken over.
She didn't wear a corset. He'd known that for some time. None of the Neely women wore corsets. It had been the topic of numerous late-night drunken conversations at the saloon. He'd heard men debating whether or not the women wore some fancy new garment that pushed their breasts up but left them looking natural or if all that resplendent roundness was just nature's gift. Sloan pretty well sided with the nature's gift explanation. Those high, soft curves bounced much too easily for there to be anything hampering them.
The male part of him hardened predictably, and he shifted in his saddle. He needed some distraction before he was in no condition to ride. Instead, as they rode past their earlier hiding place, he found himself following the path of his thoughts and asking crudely, "How many men have you known?"
She didn't even deign to turn and look at him when she gave her reply. "More than I wanted. That's a stupid question if I ever heard one."
As an answer, it wasn't particularly precise, but it told him enough. She had some experience, and it probably hadn't been pleasant. That was why she dressed and behaved as she did. She didn't want to attract men's favors. Maybe she'd been raped. The war had been brutal on women as well as men. That might make this encounter unpleasant for both of them, but she was the one who had agreed to it. Maybe he could teach her that sex could be good.
He liked that idea. If he could teach her to like what he did, she might be available more often. He didn't want a clinging vine like the widow, but if they could slip off down the hill occasionally like this, he'd be satisfied. It was a hell of a lot more than he had now—providing he let the Neelys stay.
Scowling at the ramifications of that notion, Sloan pushed on ahead. By now, he ought to have learned better. Women were insidious. Once a man let them into his life, they took over. He had fared much better these last years by keeping women out and visiting them only when necessary. It wouldn't do to start contemplating keeping one handy. That would open a whole can of worms he didn't want to have to deal with.
Sam kept quiet this time, he noted. She was probably searching every clump of trees for a rifle barrel aimed at her. That's what he should have been doing when she'd been talking his ear off earlier. But he'd let her distract him and almost got his head blown off as a result. He would have to start concentrating on the important things and keep his lust where it belonged.
They ate a hasty lunch on a hillside overlooking an open meadow. Sloan could almost hear the little cogs in Sam's brain whirl as she examined the scrub trees and coarse, dead grass. He suspected she was just itching to dig her hands into the dirt to test its quality, but oddly enough, she refrained. He had difficulty seeing past his lust, but he was aware that he dealt with a woman of complicated character. Lord only knew, just her manner of dress would tell him that.
The level of the land flattened as they rode into the early winter sunset. Sloan felt his companion's restlessness, but refrained from commenting on it.
"Are we going to camp out before we get to town?" she finally asked. "It's getting dark, and I don't see any sign of civilization."
"We've got a way to go yet. If you're tired, we can stop here." He began scanning the horizon for a suitable stopping place. He was eager to reach the hotel, but he wasn't an uncontrollable adolescent any longer. He could wait.
"I'm not tired," she answered defensively, "but the horses need resting." Reluctantly, she added, "And I promised Mama I would put on a dress before going into town."
He turned and looked at her with interest. "A dress? Were you planning on pulling it on over your trousers?"
She gave him a steely look. "That's none of your damned business. Just give me some warning of your plans so I can prepare."
At this point, he didn't care one way or another if she wore dresses, pants, or nothing at all. He was hot and hard just thinking about her without contemplating what she was or was not wearing. He'd damned well waited entirely too long for a woman this time. The images he conjured right now would scare her halfway till tomorrow if she could see them.
"We'll camp then, hit town tomorrow. We won't accomplish much there by the time we ride in tonight anyway." Sloan found the place he was looking for and guided his horse in that direction. He wondered if he could talk her into sharing a bedroll. From her prickly attitude, he suspected he'd have to talk mighty fast.
She knew how to make camp. She had her horse hobbled, fed, and brushed down before he had their gear unloaded. She had a fire started and coffee cooking while he took care of his horse. He bagged a rabbit while she made pan bread and beans. They worked easily together, without either one having to say much.
As he sat and savored the evening meal under the stars, Sloan contemplated the women he knew back East doing what Sam had just done. His mouth curved maliciously at the thought. He'd only have to mention scorpions and snakes and they wouldn't even get off their horses. Sam had already killed one of the insects without a second thought. He'd wager she'd offer to cook the snake if he caught one.
It was almost like camping with another man. Almost. The firelight gleamed in copper tresses and accented the shadows of hills and valley revealed by the open neck of her shirt. When she spoke, that sultry voice of hers went straight from his ears to his loins. She was slender and soft in all the right places, and he couldn't keep his gaze away, so he kept his hat pulled down to hide his eyes.
"I didn't think you cooked," he said, just to
hear her answer. The bread was delicious, light and sweet, unlike anything he'd cooked for himself over a campfire.
"Not like my mother," Sam admitted, sipping her coffee. "But everyone ought to know how to cook. Once I have my farm, I'll have to cook for myself. I'd rather know how to do it right."
"Your family must have had land back in Tennessee. Why didn't you stay there while your father explored California?"
She cocked an eyebrow at his unusual interest, but she answered easily enough. "We lost family in the war. We lost people who had worked with us for as long as I could remember. We lost friends and neighbors. And the ones who lived or stayed behind are consumed with hatred. We were Union supporters, and everyone knew that. Even though we've been friends and neighbors all our lives, we were suddenly the enemy. It wasn't so bad during the war when everyone helped everyone else, but once the South lost . . ." She shrugged.
Sloan had left Boston before the war started. He had never considered joining. He couldn't bear to go back there, even to fight. Three thousand miles had scarcely been far enough away from home. When he'd first left, he had considered taking a ship for the Far East, but he hadn't had a dime at the time. So he'd buried himself out here. The war inside himself had been vicious enough without hearing of the war back there.
He was just realizing how much he had locked himself away from, but it was too late to matter now.
Sloan sat up and unrolled his bedding. With only a glance to the woman still nursing her mug of coffee on the other side of the campfire, he said without inflection, "It's warmer if we share. We can start our twenty-four hours now if you like."
Chapter Twenty
Samantha reached for her own bedroll. "Dream on, Talbott. We look for my father first."
"We'll look for him. I don't make promises I can't keep. I just figure we can get home sooner if we start now."
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