The Texas Ranger's Daughter. Jenna Kernan

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СКАЧАТЬ he huffed and spun her up and over his shoulder as if he had some special gift for tossing young ladies about as if they were sacks of feed.

      Her new position caused his shoulder to buffet her abdomen with each running stride, sending her corset stays digging into her flesh. She could scarcely draw a breath and the blood drained to her head, making it pound until she felt dizzy enough to faint.

      Just as suddenly as they had begun, he stopped, grabbing her unceremoniously by the waistband of her new lavender overskirt and tugging her to her feet.

      The soft nicker told her that there was a horse nearby.

      “You planned this?” she asked.

      He did not answer, but left her to move in the direction of the horses. She saw them now, two large dark outlines against the canyon wall. He checked the saddle girth and the leather buckle holding the saddlebags tied across the horse’s rump.

      She stepped closer and saw a leather rifle scabbard tied beneath the saddle flap. The butt end of the rifle gleamed in the starlight.

      There, looped over the saddle horn, was a leather cartridge belt, loaded with bullets. The twin holsters held two pistols.

      Boon donned the cartridge belt, strapping it low on his hips and tying the holsters to each thigh. He stowed Larson’s pistol in the boot not holding his knife. Then he turned to her and she took a step away, but not quickly enough, for he captured her about the waist.

      “Up!” he said and hoisted her, then plunked her down upon the saddle, heedless of the tangle of her skirts or the complete impropriety of a woman sitting a saddle in such a fashion. An instant later, he was mounted behind her, spurring their horse. The hoofbeats told her that the second horse was strung to the saddle behind the first.

      “Is this a rescue?”

      “Sentry hears you, we’re done.”

      Laurie closed her mouth as she looked around in the dark. She didn’t speak again.

      He made a growling sound in his throat and then wrapped his arms about her. “Hold on.”

      He gripped the reins, as Laurie held the saddle horn with both hands.

      He had killed a man to free her. Did he want her singularly or was there a slim chance that this madness was a rescue?

      They did not take off at a gallop as she would have liked, but at a steady walk along the road Laurie had traveled in the buckboard when she arrived. The night was so black that she could not see two feet before them and wondered how the horses made their way.

      The journey was slow, torturously slow. Laurie strained her ears for the sound of pursuit. Boon’s big body encircled hers. He wrapped one arm about her waist and dragged her into the pocket made by his chest and thighs and hunched so her corset stays impaled the soft flesh beneath her breasts.

      He was warm and smelled of sweat and leather. Her chin fit under his jaw and occasionally his stubbly face scratched against her hair, further tangling the bird’s nest it had become. She sat stiff with tension, trembling and breathing as quickly as she could, given the constraints of his grip and her corset.

      “Shouldn’t we go faster?”

      “Horse breaks a leg and we’re caught. Plus a walking horse is quiet. You can’t hear the hoofbeats from up there.” He motioned to the cliffs above them.

      “I can’t see,” she whispered.

      “Neither can the sentry, but the horses can.

      Now be still.”

      She clamped her lips down on the dozens of questions she wished to ask. Who was he? Had her father sent him? What were his intentions? Would they make it?

      When they reached the canyon floor the sky opened up above them and the starlight glowed weakly. Rocks now loomed like outlaws hunched to spring out. They passed a scrubby piñon pine on an outcropping that so resembled a man she nearly screamed a warning.

      They turned left, heading south.

      “We came from that direction,” she whispered.

      “And that’s the way they’ll expect us to go. Box canyons and narrow draws this way. But I got little choice.”

      Behind them came the sound of gunfire.

       Chapter Three

      Bullets pinged off the sheer rock face of the canyon behind them.

      “Firing blind in the draw, hoping to hit us,” whispered Boon.

      The horses set off at a trot that flowed into a lope. She craned her neck, seeing the flash of pistol fire as the sound of the riders grew louder.

      Boon left the road. The horse carrying them stumbled, but recovered its footing. They slowed to a walk again and then stopped. Boon slid off the dark horse, dragging her along.

      “Damned dress shines like a bedsheet.”

      Laurie glanced down to see it was so. The white pleated lace at her cuffs and the pale fitted lavender bodice with matching overskirt seemed to glow from within. Only the dark blue-violet fabric of her underskirt, visible below the hem of her lavender draping, vanished in the near darkness. He pushed her back between two rocks, holding the reins of both horses in one hand and her waist with the other, using his body to block hers.

      She cowered behind him, clutching his vest and burying her face in the warm leather. Laurie remained motionless as the rocks, listening as the sound of hoofbeats grew closer. Gradually, the shout of riders grew more distant and the gunfire ceased.

      Boon drew her out of the narrow gap. “They’ll figure out which way we went pretty quick and be back again. Got an hour maybe to get ahead of them. None of them can see to track and they won’t know which canyon we ducked into so we got a better than average chance of losing them in the dark.” He lifted her bound hands and retrieved the knife from his boot, then sliced the ropes that had held her since her capture. She rubbed the imprints left by the cord upon her wrists with her gloved hand and flexed her numb fingers as needles of pain returned with the blood.

      He turned his back, rummaging in his saddlebags. Laurie took the opportunity to run, but hindered by the restriction of the formfitting overskirt at her hips, she only reached the second horse when she heard a curse.

      He was on her in an instant, capturing her about the waist, hoisting her off her feet and tucking her under his arm. Then he walked back from the horses with her draped across his hip like a naughty child.

      “Ain’t you got no sense? I’ll tie you again.” He set her on her feet and held her by the shoulders.

      Even in the weak light of the stars she could make out his brow sunk low over his pale eyes as he scowled at her.

      “Let me go.”

      “They’ll catch you quicker than a treed possum. You got to mind me or we both die. Now, take off that getup.”

      Laurie gasped, then inched back as he advanced. Her СКАЧАТЬ