Early Dawn

  As she started to work on the last wound, she went on to tell Matthew how John’s parents had vilified her reputation in order to protect their son’s good name. “My so-called friends would no longer acknowledge me. If they saw me on the street, they pretended not to know me. My mother and I were turned away from homes where we’d been welcomed for years. The situation wouldn’t have improved with time. People have long memories when it comes to a scandal. Bastards and the women who bear them are shunned. I didn’t want to live that way for the rest of my life, and I certainly didn’t wish to see my mother treated that way, so we decided to put the house up for sale and relocate.”

  “I’m . . . sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Not on my behalf, at any rate. My mother loved living in the city, but I always found the strict social mores a bit stifling. Even though I went to finishing school and learned to say ‘mercy me’ instead of ‘damn it to hell,’ I was still the same old Eden, just a more polished and educated version. Knowing French and Latin doesn’t change who you are inside.”

  That earned her a faint smile from him. “Ace taught you to say ‘damn it to hell’?”

  “No, I owe Joseph for that. When we were young, Mama had to work to help Ace keep food on the table. It fell to Joseph to watch after me most of the time. He used crass language in my presence, and I grew up not realizing there was anything wrong with it. When Ace started winning big at cards, Mama was finally able to stay home. She set to work polishing away all my rough edges and turning me into a lady.”

  With a sigh of relief, Eden tied the last knot and sat back on her heels. “There, it’s done.”

  “Not quite. Douse ’em . . . with whiskey again, just for good measure.”

  She did as he said, but with no small regret. He hissed in air at the sting. Then she went to find him another shirt so the flies wouldn’t get to the wounds. When she returned, Matthew appeared to be either fast asleep or passed out. As she worked to get the shirt on him, she decided it was the latter, for he didn’t awaken as she tugged, pulled, and shoved to get his upper body covered. When that was done, she laid out the bedding and rolled him onto the pallet. Then she set up camp. By the time she had a small fire going, her injured ribs pained her greatly.

  She yearned to rest, but first she needed to bury the cougar carcass. The smell of a fresh kill might bring in other predators. Using Matthew’s spade, she hacked at the hard earth near the cat until she’d dug a deep enough hole. Her heart ached with sadness when she looked at the lion. Even in death, he was majestic. Why, oh, why hadn’t he just run away? Instead, he had attacked and, in the doing, had sealed his fate. Moving him proved to be another daunting task, because he weighed far more than she did. By the time Eden had covered him with dirt, her legs were trembling and her knees felt as if they had turned to water.

  Just then, Matthew stirred. Eden hurried over to him. He fixed her with a bleary gaze. “How long have I been out?”

  “A couple of hours.”

  He grimaced as he sat up. “We need to get the hell out of here.”

  Eden could scarcely credit her ears. “You can’t ride in this condition.”

  “Damned thing didn’t gut me. I’m just cut up a little. I can ride.”

  “You might break open the wounds!”

  “They aren’t that deep.”

  Eden watched helplessly as he staggered to his feet. It took him a moment to get his balance, but as soon as he did, he bent to roll up the bedding.

  “I’ll get it,” she insisted.

  He shot her a disgruntled look. “I’m not hurt that bad, Eden. Don’t fuss over me.”

  Despite her protests, he helped to break camp and determinedly saddled the horses. When she tried to assist him, he shooed her away with, “You’ve got busted ribs, damn it. You’re in a lot worse shape than I am.”

  When the horses were trail ready, he mounted up. Eden had no choice but to do the same. Falling in behind the mule, she glared at Matthew’s back. Foolish man. He sat the horse as if nothing had happened to him. What was he trying to prove, that he was invincible? Granted, the cuts weren’t that deep, but they still had to hurt every time he moved.

  At dusk, they stopped to rest the horses until darkness fell. Then, at Matthew’s insistence, they rode for another two hours to make up for the lost time. Eden was so exhausted when they finally stopped that her feet dragged as she helped Matthew get the animals settled for the night. She couldn’t eat her portion of jerky. Instead she only drank some water.

  Evidently Matthew was as weary as she was, for as soon as he’d eaten, he unrolled their bedding, doffed his hat and gun belt, and gingerly settled on the pallet. By his movements, Eden knew his wounds pained him more than he let on. When she joined him under the blanket, she also realized that he had no intention of holding her close to share his body heat. Her admission that she felt attracted to him still hung between them, she guessed. That made her so sad. Matthew had far more wounds than those on his chest—wounds that ran deep and continued to fester.

  They lay on their backs, gazes fixed on the heavens. Eden couldn’t remember ever having seen so many stars. Even with inches separating them, heat radiated from Matthew’s rangy body and cocooned her in warmth. Oh, how she hoped he didn’t have a fever. What would she do if his wounds grew infected? They were nearly out of whiskey, and over the last two days, she hadn’t seen an aspen tree, the bark of which could be boiled into tea for treating a high fever. If he fell ill, she guessed she would have to hide him somewhere and go in search of an aspen grove.

  Eden tried to close her eyes and fall asleep, but her mind raced. There were things she wanted to say to him, things she felt he desperately needed to hear. “When I was a little girl, my mother would sometimes tell me that out of all her children, she loved me most of all.” He said nothing, but Eden was determined to finish what she’d started. “It bothered me dreadfully,” she went on. “I felt sad for my brothers and more than a little guilty. It seemed to me that she should have loved all of us exactly the same.”

  Eden rolled onto her side to face him. His gaze fixed on the heavens, he smelled faintly of bay rum, the scent lingering from when he’d shaved last night. “One day when she said that to me, I couldn’t stop myself from asking how she could love me more than she did my brothers. I told her it made me feel awful.”

  His jaw muscle started to tic.

  Eden sighed, but she refused to allow his silence to discourage her. “Mama just laughed and hugged me tight. Then she told me about all the different corners of her heart and how each corner had one of her children’s names on it. In Ace’s corner, she loved him most all. In my corner, she loved me most of all. As she named off each of us, it started to make perfect sense to me, and I never worried again when she said I was her favorite.”

  Matthew finally turned his head to search her gaze. “Where are you going with this, Eden?”

  “I think you know, Matthew. You have many corners in your heart. My name may never be on one of them, but the point remains: You can have a life with someone else without breaking your vow to love Livvy forever. She has her own special corner of your heart, and in that corner, you’ll always, always love her.”

  “What woman on earth would ever feel right with me, knowing that I still love my dead wife?”

  “What woman worth having would object?” she countered. “You loved Livvy and always will. Love isn’t something we can simply decide to stop feeling. It stays with us all our lives. I admire your loyalty to her. It tells me that when you love, you love very deeply. That’s a good thing, not a bad one, a very admirable trait.”

  He studied her for a long while. Then he turned his gaze back to the sky. Eden wished he would say something, but he didn’t. And he stubbornly maintained a safe distance from her, even on the narrow pallet.

  Eden said nothing more. She’d given him enough to chew on for one night.

  Matthew lay awake long after Eden fell asleep. The soft whir of her breathing wasn
’t exactly a snore, but close. Corners of his heart. What a bunch of skimble-skamble. And unless he missed his guess, Eden was bound and determined to chisel her name on one of them. The very thought scared him half to death. She was a beautiful woman and a tempting package, no question about it, but he couldn’t let himself love anyone again. Life was too full of risks. If that cat had attacked her this morning instead of him, she’d be dead. Tomorrow they might encounter another danger. This was harsh and perilous country. There was no guarantee that he’d be able to protect her a second time.

  The long and short of it was that he couldn’t let her get under his skin and then end up burying her. He just couldn’t. Call him a coward, but he refused to live through that again. When she looked at him with those big blue eyes, he read emotions in them that made him feel as if he were standing at the edge of a cliff and she was about to give him a push. She had his thoughts all messed up. She was making him question convictions that he’d had for three years. Just looking at her gave him a hard-on. Enough.

  From this moment forward, she could preach all she liked, but that didn’t mean he had to listen. As for her being attracted to him, he would nip that in the bud, too. He wasn’t sure how just yet, but he’d figure out something.

  Eden awakened before Matthew did the next morning. Hoping to lighten his workload, because she knew he was in more pain than he wanted to reveal, she strapped on her guns, donned her jacket, and traipsed off through the early dawn to gather firewood. Then she fished through the rations for ingredients for breakfast. Hunting for meat was out. She didn’t think she’d be able to get anything with a crudely fashioned spear, and firing a gun would be too risky. She found a tin of beef and decided fried potatoes would accompany it nicely.

  As she set to work, stoking the fire and peeling the spuds, Matthew stirred awake. When he saw that she already had a pot of coffee on to boil and was preparing to cook, he sat up and finger-combed his hair, looking so handsome that he nearly took her breath away.

  What truly spoke to her were his eyes. They were so incredibly blue and clear, like the crest of an ocean breaker on a calm summer day, and, unlike when she’d first met him, they seemed so expressive to her now, twinkling with amusement when he was about to laugh, going warm when he studied her face, darkening to the color of storm clouds when he felt sad or worried. This morning they were stormy.

  Studying him, Eden knew she was treading on perilous ground, in danger of losing her heart to a man who claimed he had nothing left to give her in return.

  “How’s your chest this morning?” she asked.

  “Fine,” he bit out. “The cuts aren’t that deep. They’ll heal fast as long as infection doesn’t set in.”

  “I cleaned them well. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen.”

  He struggled to his feet and bent to roll up the bedding.

  “I’ll get that, Matthew.”

  “You’re hurt, too, and a whole lot worse than I am,” he retorted. “I’m fine, I said.”

  “My goodness, aren’t we cheery this morning?”

  “Maybe I’m cross more mornings than not. Did you ever think of that? You think you know me, but the truth is, you don’t.”

  He strode down to the creek without fetching his shaving gear. Eden gazed thoughtfully after him. When he returned a few minutes later, she offered him a cup of coffee. He took it without saying thank-you. Then he ate the food in sullen silence.

  When the remains of breakfast had been cleaned up, they broke camp without speaking. Eden was weary of riding. Last night, she’d grown so exhausted that she’d caught herself nodding off in the saddle. She didn’t look forward to another long day, especially when her companion was in such a grump.

  There was no help for it, though. If they made for a town too soon, the Sebastians might cut them off before they got there. Eden understood the danger, and she preferred to avoid a shoot-out. Target-practicing was a lot different from aiming her gun at a man and pulling the trigger.

  While Matthew saddled the horses, Eden hurried down to the creek for a quick scrub. The water was icy, but she enjoyed the first bracing splash to her face to get the sleep out of her eyes. She used her reflection on the water as a mirror to do something with her hair. The wild mane of curls proved impossible to tame without a brush and pins, so she settled for combing it with her fingers and knotting it at the back of her head. At least that would keep it out of her eyes when the wind picked up later. She hadn’t smeared mud on her face in days. Her sunburn was now healed, and the battered straw hat Matthew had lent her had a wide brim to help protect her from the sun.

  Matthew was putting the packs on Herman when she returned. While he did that, she began erasing all signs of their campfire, as she’d seen Matthew do, and then she feathered away their footprints and all the hoofmarks. The binding around her ribs was a godsend.

  She hoped that Matthew might say she’d done a good job when she finished erasing their tracks, but instead he swung up onto his horse, tipped his hat low to shade his eyes from the sun, and rode off before she’d even mounted up. She had to hurry to catch up with him.

  That morning he headed northwest into the foothills, undoubtedly to make another circle. Since coming upon the Sebastians’ tracks, he’d been extremely alert to their surroundings, either scanning the hillsides or searching for signs that the gang had recently been in the area. She’d also noticed that he’d been keeping their fires small at night, which told her he feared the criminals could be somewhere nearby.

  A few minutes later, when they came to a meadow, he slowed his horse so she could ride abreast of him. “Yesterday when you were telling me about John, you said his father threatened to disinherit him if he went through with the marriage. Can I take that to mean John will be a rich man someday?”

  Eden nodded. “His father owns five banks and several businesses.”

  “So John was quite a catch.”

  “I suppose you could say that, yes.”

  He drew his horse to a stop and looked her directly in the eye. “The next time you fancy yourself attracted to me, Eden, remember one thing: I’m not a good catch. I have very little money and no way to make a lot.”

  “Money isn’t everything. You’re not afraid of hard work, and heaven knows you have a determined nature.”

  “Big problem. I have no land to work, remember?”

  “You have the land in Oregon.”

  “Even if I decided to go home, which I have no intention of doing, the Lazy J is a family-owned ranch, and the profits are divided among everyone. My share was never large, and we’re all a far cry from wealthy. My parents’ house is livable, but there’s nothing fancy about it. The cabin Livvy and I shared was nothing to shout about, either, squat and tiny, with only two bedrooms.”

  “I didn’t always live in a fancy house, Matthew, and I have no overwhelming need to do so again. There’s a lot more to life than that. I could be happy on a ranch with only the basic necessities.”

  “You think that now, but you might change your mind after the new wore off. On a ranch, you don’t work with cattle only for the fun of it, and you can’t avoid the unpleasant jobs just because they turn your stomach. Branding and castrating are part of the business. So is selling the steers for slaughter, no matter how fond of them you become. It’s a hard, demanding life with few days off. No expensive honeymoons, no fancy dresses, no attending the opera or theater, no kitchen staff to oversee. You’ve got mettle, Eden; I’ll give you that. But you’re not made of stern enough stuff to be a rancher’s wife.”

  He nudged his horse into a trot to leave her trailing behind him again. Eden wanted to shout a retort at him, but she could think of nothing to say. Why did he always sell her short? It made her so furious that she had to clench her teeth to keep from screaming. Yesterday, after the cougar attack, had she balked at stitching him up? No, not even once. How dared he say she didn’t have what it took to be a rancher’s wife!

  For about five minutes, Matthew co
ngratulated himself on a job well-done. A woman couldn’t very well feel attracted to a man when he riled her temper at every turn. But then he started to feel guilty as hell. He’d seen the hurt, bruised look in Eden’s eyes when he’d taken that jab at her, and now he wished he could take it back. She was made of stern enough stuff to be a rancher’s wife, and he was a low-down, cowardly skunk for telling her she wasn’t. Just because she was getting under his skin was no excuse for him to tell her a flat-out lie, and it was no excuse to injure her feelings, either.

  Damn. Every time he looked at her, his brains leaked out his ears. He dreaded having to apologize, but he knew there was no help for it.

  For lunch, they stopped by a narrow stream that meandered through a gorgeous stand of ponderosa pine. While they rested the horses and chewed on jerky, Matthew spread a map of the area over his lap. Though still miffed, Eden scooted close so she could peruse it with him.

  “That’s Holden Creek,” he said, pointing to a small dot. “After the train was held up, I rode there for help. To say I wasn’t impressed with the marshal would be an understatement. He’s an old, paunchy drunk, and his pals were the same. They wouldn’t offer much protection against the Sebastians.”

  “No,” she agreed. “We should head for a town where there are a lot of people and enough lawmen to deal with gunslingers. Denver would be ideal.” Squinting to make sense of the squiggles on the map, she asked, “Where are we right now?”