Judith French - Morgan's Woman

Tamsin liked children well enough, but thirteen scabby-kneed, Maxwell boys-ranging from two to eighteen years of age-was unreasonable. Considering Willie as husband material was worse. She wasn't that desperate, not if she'd had to live out her life as a spinster.

So she'd let Atwood sweet-talk her. She'd bought his lies and his excuses, and trusted him. And he'd ruined everything her grandfather had spent a lifetime building… not to mention her dreams. Atwood hadn't wanted babies. She had, but now… Now she was glad he'd spilled his seed over her good lace coverlet instead of planting it where it would do the most good.

She'd lost all respect for her husband and gradually come to dislike him intensely. When he'd died, she'd felt nothing but relief.

"Good-bye and good riddance," she murmured sleepily.

Maybe she wasn't a woman who made good choices when it came to men. She'd nearly fallen prey to another predator back in Nebraska when she'd allowed good-looking Jack Cannon to take her to dinner a few times.

Jack had seemed a gentleman at first, nicely dressed and well spoken. But he'd presumed on her friendship and become frighteningly possessive. All too soon, she'd discovered aspects of his personality that she couldn't tolerate. After the last incident, she'd had enough of his attentions and left town.

I must be an awful judge of character, she thought. I'm better counting on myself, than looking for a man to-

Dancer nickered loudly.

"What is it, boy? What's wrong?"

Fancy snorted and moved close to where Tamsin curled against the cold. The stallion squealed and pawed the ground. Stones rolled under his iron-shod hooves.

Tamsin scrambled to her feet, mouth dry. Her fingers clutched the grip of her heavy Navy Colt. Then the hair rose on her neck as the sound of a woman's unearthly scream split the darkness.

The mare panicked and bolted away, but Dancer held his ground and trumpeted a fiery challenge.

With trembling hands, Tamsin raised her weapon, trying to locate the source of the danger. Then she caught an overpowering scent of cat, and a snarling shadow hurled out of the treetops, coming to earth between her and the rearing stallion.

Ash shoved the MacGreggor woman out of the way and fired three quick shots into the big cat. The woman went down on her hands and knees, and the cougar roared in pain. Ash took aim at the source of the animal's cry and fired again. This time there was only the thud of a heavy weight toppling onto the rocky ground and the echo of hoofbeats above the sound of his own harsh breathing.

"You all right?" he demanded as he fumbled for a match.

She didn't answer.

"Are you hurt?" He hoped she hadn't fainted. Females did that all the time, and he never knew if it was for real or an act.

He kept his pistol ready in his left hand and struck a light against a rock with the other. Murderer or not, it went against his grain to stand by while a woman was ripped apart by a mountain lion. But being soft-hearted didn't make him fool enough to let her shoot him while he was saving her life.

The match flared, casting a circle of yellow illumination in the pitch-blackness of the moonless night. The suspect didn't seem injured. Her eyes were wide open, staring at the cougar sprawled inches from her feet. She didn't look like a hardened killer. She seemed young and vulnerable.

"Stay where you are," he warned, motioning toward the dead cat. "I didn't use all my shots on him."

He lit another match and kicked some leaves and sticks into a heap on a flat section of bare rock. In no time, he had a small fire. The MacGreggor woman still hadn't made a sound or moved a muscle.

"You're not deaf, are you?" he asked. He rolled the dead animal over, proved to himself that it was a male, and noted the crippled hind leg. The cougar was young, maybe a two-year-old. Ash reckoned the animal's weight at nearly two hundred pounds, but he was thin and in poor shape. His ribs stood out like fence slats, and his tail was matted and balding in spots.

He knew that most mountain lions feared the scent of man and stayed clear of them. Doubtless this one's weak leg had hurt his ability to hunt game. If the animal had been stronger, he decided, it would have attacked the horses instead of a human.

He felt a pang of sympathy for the cougar as he ran his fingers over the tawny hide. You're better off, he thought. A bullet's easier than a slow death by starvation.

The wounds were easy to find. Two of his shots were killing ones, one had shattered the cat's bad hip, and another had missed altogether.

Ash shrugged. The middle of the night wasn't the best time for hunting predators. A few seconds later with the last shot and either he or Tamsin MacGreggor would have had a lifetime reminder of the incident, provided they'd survived to remember. A cat this size, even a crippled one, had razor teeth and claws that could disembowel a human in seconds.

The woman sat up and brushed gravel off her hands.

"You could have killed my horse." Her voice was throaty and southern, but she was clearly educated.

Ash's eyes narrowed. She was scared, but obviously trying not to show it. "I saved your life."

"My stallion would have killed the beast."

He scoffed. "The horse that's still running down the canyon?" She was beyond the circle of firelight, too far away for him to make out the color of her eyes or the expression in them. He wondered if her answer was false bravado, or if she was that naive. "You believe that stud would have stood and fought that cougar, and I could convince you to hand Texas back to Mexico."

"He would have killed him! Dancer didn't run until you started taking shots at him."

"You're under arrest," he said quietly. "I've a warrant on you for murder and horse thieving."

"I didn't kill that man."

"An eyewitness says you were covered with blood."

"I rolled him over to see if he was alive. I didn't shoot him."

"I'm authorized to bring back runaway felons," he said, ignoring her protests. "Keep your hands where I can see them, and move over into the light."

She rose to her feet. "Are you a lawman?"

"Not exactly."

She stiffened. "You're taking me back to Sweetwater for money, aren't you?"

"Partly. Partly because I don't approve of murder."

"You've made a mistake, Mr. Morgan. I'm no criminal. The horses were stolen from me in the first place."

She was tall and big-boned for a woman, but she moved with the fluid grace of a yearling doe. "That's far enough," he warned gruffly. "Don't try anything foolish." He tapped his holstered pistol. "I'd hate to have to shoot you."

"Sam Steele was dead when I found him." She smoothed her skirts as if she were standing in church instead of a steep hillside in the middle of nowhere.

"It's not my job to decide who killed him. It's my job to bring you back, dead or alive."

"You're trying to frighten me. If you'd wanted me dead, you would have let that thing"-she motioned toward the cougar-"devour me."

"Maybe I should have. You made this personal when you stole my supplies. I'd rather see you stand trial."

She didn't back down. "I didn't take your bread and cheese. I traded fairly for them."

"Needles?"

"Good ones, imported from Germany. Actually, I'm not certain I got the best of the deal. The biscuits were rather tasteless and the cheese-"

"Never mind the cheese," he snapped. "Are you armed?"

"What?"

Ash felt his patience draining away. "Are you carrying a gun?" He liked to think he could remain a gentleman with any woman, regardless of the circumstances, but this Tamsin MacGreggor was exasperating. "I have to search you. I've got no interest in your body, so long as you're not hiding a pistol or a knife."