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He turned in the saddle and pinned her with a questioning look in those hard, gray-green eyes.
“It’s nothing,” she said quickly.
But what if her bladder were ready to burst? What would she have to do to make him stop?
She kneed the horse forward and studied the man’s back. Cordell Lawson wasn’t as easygoing as he appeared. He was driving himself hard and dragging her along with him. Her thighs burned. Her neck hurt from tipping her head against the sun. This was, she realized, a perfect example of mismatched traveling companions. She was human, and he was not.
The trail narrowed and began to climb. Halfway up the steep path she knew she couldn’t make it. Rocks jutted above her, and below, the river glinted silver. If the horse stumbled…
She drew rein and stopped.
Cord heard the horse’s steps cease. What now? He kept on, hoping she would resume her pace, but no sound came from behind him. Clenching his teeth, he turned his mount.
She had halted in the middle of the trail and was sitting there, slumped in the saddle, with that ridiculous feather drooped over her face. But her hands told him all he needed to know. She wore deerskin riding gloves, and while he couldn’t see her knuckles, he knew from the way she gripped the saddle horn that her hands would ache come sundown. Especially if she hadn’t sat a horse in—what had she said?—six years. And they’d been on the trail for a full seven hours. Hell, she wouldn’t be able to sit down for a week.
Of all the doctors in Oregon, why did he have to find her? She was prim and proper and saddle-green. Too slim and willowy to be very strong. And female. Very definitely female—moods and all. Probably enjoyed herself only once a year, at Christmas.
He’d bet she’d never taken a bath in the woods, either. In two days she’d smell like a rotting cabbage. If there was one thing that spoiled the pleasure of the mountains and the sky and the sweet, fresh air it was a partner who smelled bad.
For a long minute he sat still and watched her. Just when he thought maybe he ought to say something, she kicked her mare and it jolted forward.
She moved toward him, still bent over the saddle horn, her head down, not even watching where she was going. Her shoulders were hunched tight with exhaustion.
But she was moving. She had sand; he’d say that for her.
Chapter Three
Cord watched the exhausted woman pry her fingers off the saddle horn and lay the mare’s leather reins in her lap. For the last three hours, as they’d climbed the slope to where the trail leveled off at Frog Jump Butte, she’d hung on by sheer force of will, and her face showed it. Beneath the brim of that sad-looking gray felt hat her eyelids were almost shut.
He let loose an irrepressible snort. No wonder. She was fighting to stay awake, clinging to the hard leather pommel like she’d been glued there.
“Let’s make camp,” he called.
There was no response.
He dismounted and peered through the darkness at her form, still hunched so low in the saddle the purple feather in her hatband brushed the mare’s ear.
“You all right?” he ventured.
After a long silence, a gravelly voice drifted out of the shadows. “Do you always travel like this? Of course I am not all right. I’m half-dead.”
“Travel like what? You’re not half-dead. You can still talk, can’tcha? I hate a woman who exaggerates.”
She straightened, groaned and tried to swing her leg over the horse’s back to dismount. “I know your friend is in need of medical help, but you travel like someone is breathing down your neck.”
She gave up, hefted her bottom over the cantle and slid off the mare backward. When her feet hit the ground, she grasped the animal’s tail to keep from staggering and leaned her forehead against the mare’s hindquarters.
“Maybe someone is,” he said.
She just shook her head and made a small moaning noise.
Goddamn, was she crying? “I’ll build a fire.”
She lifted her head and took a wobbly step. “I would gather some kindling for you, Mr. Lawson, but I don’t think I can bend over. Who would be following you?”
He didn’t answer. Five minutes of scrounging and his arms were full of pinecones and dry branches. He kicked some rocks into a circle and dumped his load. As far as he could tell, she hadn’t moved.
“You can stand up all night if you want, Doc, but I wouldn’t advise it.”
“I will be seated when I am…able. In the meantime, I need to answer a call of nature.” She took another shaky step and grabbed the horse’s tail again.
Cord tossed three broken tree limbs onto his unlit fire and strode toward her. “If you were a man, you could pee right where you’re standing. Seeing as you’re not…”
He grasped her elbows and propelled her ahead of him into the scrub. “See that big huckleberry bush? Use that.”
He released her, and she swayed forward.
“Yes,” she murmured. “Thank you. I can manage now.”
He tramped back to the fire pit while she made rustling sounds in the brush. Out of courtesy he decided not to ignite the kindling until she’d finished. Firelight would illuminate the whole area.
He waited, stalked off into the woods on the other side of camp to do his own business, then squatted beside the fire and waited some more, his flint box poised and ready.
Nothing. Not one leaf rattle or scritch-scratch of twigs came from the direction of the huckleberry bush. An evening songbird started in, stopped, then resumed singing. What in blazes was taking her so long?
“Dr. West?”
There was no answer.
She couldn’t have stumbled off the edge of the butte. Hell’s bells, she couldn’t walk that far. What was she doing?
“Dr. West? Sage?”
To heck with her. He struck a spark and puffed his breath onto the thatch of smoldering pine needles. When it caught, he added more branches, then unloaded his saddlebag.
As he worked laying out his bedroll and the supper things, he listened.
The sparrow twittered on as if it was his last night on earth. A coyote yipped somewhere. But nothing sounded like a female doing her business behind a bush. He began to wonder about that split-up-the-front skirt she wore. Did it unbutton between her legs? Or did she have to pull it down and drop her drawers? Anatomically, women were at a disadvantage.
The songbird stopped abruptly, after which he heard nothing but the occasional spark popping from the fire. What in blazes was going on behind that huckleberry bush? Nobody took half an hour to pee.
“Sage?” He stood up. “Dr. West? I’m coming over.” His boots crunched through the bracken, managing to stop just before he tripped over her.
She lay curled up on her side, her hat squashed into the pine needles. Cord knelt beside her, checked her breathing.
Sound asleep. He suppressed a chuckle. Just one tuckered out, ladyfied lady. He’d bet she’d pulled up her drawers and then just fallen over.
Oh, boy. He’d have to wake her up for supper.
He strode back to camp, untied her bedroll and spread it out by the fire. He mixed up some biscuits, then opened a tin of beans and set it on a flat rock. Over it, close to the heat, he placed the tin pan with six lumps of sticky biscuit dough arranged in a circle, and one in the middle. No fresh water up here, so they’d make do with what was left in the canteens.
And whiskey. His mouth watered at the thought. He wouldn’t get drunk, just smooth out the rough places. It had been a long time since he’d felt this edgy.
She was still asleep when he went to get her. “Doc?” He nudged her shoulder with the toe of his boot. “Wake up. Supper’s ready.”
She groaned and pulled her knees up closer to her chin.
“Doc?” Aw, the devil with it. He went down on one knee, slid his arms under her and stood up. She weighed no more than a sack of sugar. Her long legs swung as he moved, but she didn’t wake up.
He laid her out on her bedroll and she opened her eyes and looked up at him. “Just what do you think you are doing, manhandling my person?”
Man, did she wake up fast! Her voice was clear as a cold creek.
“You fell asleep. I lugged you out of the woods for supper.”
She sat up. “Supper?”
“Beans and biscuits.” And whiskey.
“Oh?” She smiled and her whole face lit up, especially her eyes. In the firelight they looked like the purple pansies Nita used to grow. Big and velvety.
“You haven’t answered my question,” Sage said.
“Huh? What question?”
“Who is following us?”
Cord sent her a sharp look. A more single-minded female he’d never encountered. He thought he’d sidestepped the issue hours ago. “Nobody’s following us,” he said quickly.
“I don’t believe you.”
He leaned back and stared at her. “You know, I had a dog like you once. Used to get his teeth into something and wouldn’t let go.”
“I had a dog like you once, too,” she said with a sideways look. “He used to drop a ham bone at my feet and then bite me if I picked it up.”
Cord sat back on his heels and studied her. High cheekbones. Three or four freckles. A generous mouth, still rosy from sleep. Kind of an English nose. And those eyes. She was pretty, but too smart for her own good.
He switched tactics. “You like venison in your beans?”
“Is your real name Cordell?”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
She gave him a tired smile. “Nothing. I just wanted you to know I could do it, too.”
“Do what, cook?”
“No.” She looked straight into his eyes. “Change subjects when I need to.”
Oh, yeah. Sand and then some.
Sage eyed the pocketknife he slipped out of his jeans. He snapped it open with a flick of his long fingers, and she caught her breath. It looked as sharp as any scalpel she’d ever picked up, and when he pulled a leathery-looking strip of dried jerky from a dingy flour sack and carved off two-bit-size rounds, she began to breathe again. He grinned at her as if he knew what she’d been thinking and dropped them into the tin of bubbling beans.
“Is that knife really clean?” she said without thinking.
“Clean enough,” he responded.
“But we’re going to eat that! What about bacteria? Germs?”
“What about ’em? The heat’ll kill the puny ones, and this—” he dribbled in a healthy splash of whiskey “—will make the survivors happy.”
“I wasn’t thinking about the survivors. I was thinking about the ingesters.” She used the word on purpose.
“We’ll live.”
“And the germs won’t.”
“Life’s like that. Germ eat germ, so to speak. What are you so touchy about, Doc? You’re gettin’ your supper cooked, your toes toasted by the fire I built, everything but tucked in with a bedtime story.”
“I know.” She sighed. “I am grateful, Mr. Lawson. Tomorrow I won’t be so worn-out.”
“Sure you won’t,” he said dryly. “Here. Eat up.” He handed her a fork and a tin plate swimming with hot beans, topped by two over-browned biscuits. She stabbed one with her fork, but it slid sideways. She grabbed it with her fingers and bit into a corner. Or tried to.
“Who in the world taught you how to make biscuits?”
He shoveled a load of beans into his mouth. “Zack Beeler.”
Her fork clattered onto the plate. “The Zack Beeler?”
Cord’s black eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch. “You heard of him?”
“Everyone’s heard of him. He’s an outlaw! A bank robber and a murderer. I saw his poster in my uncle’s office when I was just a girl.”
“He’s also a fine trail cook. He taught me to make biscuits when I was seven.”
Sage stared at Cord. Just what kind of man was he? “Mr. Lawson, what is it you do for a living?”
“I’m a bounty hunter.”
Oh. Oh. “Is the individual who needs a doctor, um…wanted?”
“You could say that.” He dribbled a tablespoon of whiskey over his beans. “In a manner of speaking.”
Speechless, Sage watched him smash up his biscuits with the fork tines and scoop beans over them. An outlaw. She was struggling up this trail to treat someone from the shady side of the law? Someone who might possibly be—in fact, likely was—dangerous?
“Is this person your prisoner?”
“Not exactly. Close enough, though. Can’t move much with a bullet in the back.”
