He laughed. Again, the sound of genuine humor coming from him surprised her. It made her wonder if he wasn’t always a rude, bearish brute. He used to be a rancher, from a family of ranchers to the east. What would they think if they could see him now? And why had he left home? Kicked out for being the black sheep? One dastardly deed too many?
After her nervous, wakeful night, the lack of sleep caught up to her as soon as the trotting ended. With Morgan’s arms on either side of her holding the reins, the horse’s slow, steady motion was making her drowsy. She drifted off, unaware that she was leaning back against the man behind her.
The shot from a rifle was a very rude awakening. Another snake? She lowered one side of her blindfold, but didn’t see anything dead nearby, so she put the cloth back in place before he noticed.
“What did you shoot this time?” she asked curiously as he dismounted.
“The cougar loping toward us. Got him just as he pounced. He thought he’d found dinner.”
Pounced? Had she almost died? She shivered slightly, glad that she hadn’t seen that coming. She might have gotten hysterical, then he might have missed his shot. What a horrid thought! God, she hated being out here in the wilderness where death lurked all around them and she had only this man to protect her. She wished she knew how to shoot, wished she had the courage to if she did know, but mostly wished she didn’t feel so grateful that she didn’t have to—because of him.
“Will you make camp to cook it?” she asked when he didn’t get back on the horse right away.
“No, it’s one of the bigger wild cats. Some people out here consider it a delicacy since it tastes like pork, but I’m guessing you’d turn up your nose at it as you did with the snake.”
“You guessed right.”
“I still need to take it home to dispose of,” he added.
“Why?”
“Because it will draw vultures that can be seen from far away. And most men would investigate what the birds are after.”
She figured they must be near his camp if he was worried about that. She peeked out of her blindfold again and saw him tying the cougar to one of the mules. Apparently they didn’t like the smell of blood, because several of them were making a ruckus. Morgan mumbled something that might have passed for soothing. He really did value his animals, and from the way he talked about them, calling them his gals, she guessed they were more like pets to him.
When he mounted up again, he placed an apple in her hand. She smiled, well aware that he didn’t have to feed her. She wasn’t going to die from missing a few meals. She had complained when she was hungry and, of course, would continue to do so, but still, he didn’t have to oblige.
He also didn’t have to allow her to lean against him and fall asleep in his arms. But that’s what she’d been doing when he’d shot the wild cat. Maybe he hadn’t noticed or didn’t care as long as she kept quiet, so she didn’t give it another thought and refused to feel the least bit embarrassed by it.
The horse did a lot of zigzagging and climbing. She even heard its hooves striking rock. She could vaguely hear running water in the distance, so she assumed they were following the course of a stream or creek. But it definitely wasn’t an ideal path, and she kept getting rocked backward as the horse continued to climb, making it difficult to maintain her erect posture.
She was tempted to take another peek, but Morgan definitely noticed her raising her hand to her face and sharply said, “No.”
She growled to herself and called him all sorts of nasty names—silently.
Chapter Eleven
WHEN MORGAN FINALLY REMOVED her blindfold a while later, Violet was sure they’d arrived at his mine, but she was wrong. He took back his bandanna because they were surrounded by pine trees now and she couldn’t see anything beyond them. They continued climbing slowly upward. She could still hear water trickling somewhere nearby; she just couldn’t see it yet.
With so many hills surrounding Butte, when she’d been in town it had been easy to spot a number of mining camps in the distance because of the workers’ tents. There were so many of them, they made the camps look like little tent cities. She’d thought Morgan’s mine would be on a hill, too, but they’d been riding uphill for so long she realized they were actually on the side of a mountain.
Eventually the trees on their left thinned and she could see a very steep rock slope that gradually grew steeper and steeper until it looked like a cliff face. A lower slope had formed some distance to their right. Now she realized that they were riding through a narrow valley or ravine.
The trees thinned out further, and soon they came to a western-style fence that blocked their way, just two horizontal planks between posts. Morgan dismounted but didn’t help her down from his horse. She was transfixed for a moment when she saw the cabin farther up the slope. It even had a front porch with a roof. She hadn’t imagined him living in a wooden structure up here, when all the miners near Butte slept in tents—well, except for well-to-do mine owners like Shawn Sullivan. She’d walked past his big house.
Morgan was unlocking a gate. A sign was posted next to it that read: TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT. If she weren’t so tired and uncomfortable, she might have laughed, since they hadn’t seen another soul in the day and a half it had taken to get here.
“Does anyone besides you ever come up this way to trespass?” she called down to him.
“Charley Mitchell did. He followed me here. Had a damn spyglass so he stayed far enough back that I didn’t notice him.”
That was clearly a complaint, yet it made her chuckle. “That was rather clever of him.”
“More like suicidal.”
She gasped, thinking of the warning on the sign. “Did you shoot him?!”
He scowled at her. “Of course not. I gave him time to get off my hill.”
He obviously didn’t like the fact that her father had started a mine somewhere in these hills, yet eventually he must have accepted him as a neighbor. Her father always had been a charmer. If anyone could tame and talk his way around this bear, Charles could. She smiled at the thought.
She noticed the chimes and cowbells all along the fence when she heard them jingling and ringing as he opened the gate. The chimes were melodious; the bells weren’t.
“Bells?”
He picked up his reins to lead her and the mule team into the fenced area, then turned to lock the gate again, before he deigned to answer her. “A couple claim jumpers sneaked up on me and took a few potshots last year. They aren’t getting another chance to come in here without making some noise. It’s the one disadvantage of mining in such isolation. Something happens to me here, no one will know it.”
Disturbed to hear that dangerous men roamed this seemingly deserted wilderness, she pointed out, “The law in Butte knows you live in the area. Wouldn’t they search for you if after a few weeks you don’t return to town?”
“Why? Miners often move on or go home. No one looks for them.”
“But you’re a notable person, Mr. Callahan. Just about everyone I spoke to recognized your name and mentioned a different rumor about you. You’ve apparently been quite a subject of gossip in Butte.”
She was rather pleased to see him frown. His having the upper hand all the time was a difficult pill to swallow, so being able to nettle him with something, even as minor as this, evened the score a tiny bit for her.
Which was why she continued, “Aside from the fact that the good deputy knew you brought my father to town when he was injured—which, by the by, was surprisingly decent of you—I assume you mentioned to someone else that your mine is close to my father’s. Or did my father tell someone when he was in town?”
“Charley did,” he grumbled, stressing the name, “when I took him to Butte to file his claim. He was tickled pink that I allowed him to stay.”
“Allowed?”
“Don’t open that can of worms, lady,” he said.
“I insist you explain that remark. Do you somehow own this entire mountain?”
“You’re in no position to insist on anything. Or is the lady going to start yelling in public?”
“Your answer is going to make me yell?”