Code of the Wolf

“Because I’m a woman?”

“That’s what you are, Miss Campbell, even if you don’t want to admit it.”

She scrambled to her feet. “Not as far as you’re concerned, Mr. Constantine.”

His mouth twisted in that familiar smile. “Don’t worry. I’ll stick to my side of the bargain.” His smile faded. “Maybe you have good reason to distrust all men and refuse to have any on your place. I just can’t help wondering what that reason is.”

JACOB HADN’T MEANT TO ask such a direct and personal question. He should have discouraged Serenity’s curiosity about him as soon as she started to talk. He’d told himself he didn’t want to know anything more about her, but the longer they were together, the less true that seemed.

He hadn’t lied when he’d said she worked as hard as any two men, and just as well. Her skill wasn’t in question; wherever she’d learned to handle cattle, she’d taken to the lessons like a dog to a bone. And she’d never asked a single favor of him, never expected him to take on dirty work she wouldn’t do herself.

The fact was that she’d been easy to work with, and he’d had more than one assumption about female ranchers proved wrong—which only made his need to understand Serenity that much stronger.

Now she stared at him, her full lower lip caught between her teeth, and he noticed again just how pretty she was. Fresh and clean, like a desert night.

“We have discussed this before,” she said. “Does it really seem so strange to you that women might strike out on their own simply because they have the means and courage to do so?”

Her response was much less defensive than he’d expected, which pleased him for no reason at all. He phrased his answer carefully.

“There are easier ways to strike out on your own than to try running an outfit like this.”

Serenity uncorked her canteen and took a long drink. “We don’t just try, Mr. Constantine. We succeed.”

No easy answers, just as he’d expected. “You were lucky to get a place like this,” he said. “You have a spring here?”

“Coming out of the Organs,” she said. “We also have two good wells.”

“There are some pretty big outfits in the county,” he said. “The owners must envy what you have here.”

“Their envy is no concern of mine,” she said, the ice returning to her voice.

“They never give you trouble?”

“What trouble could they give us?”

“You’ve never been pressured to sell?”

“We are capable of defending ourselves, Jacob. There are plenty of good shots at Avalon. Anyone who comes here looking for trouble will get it.”

“You’ve had no problems with rustlers?”

“None to speak of,” she said.

Only because they’d been lucky, which didn’t make Jacob feel any easier in his mind. Even if the more powerful ranchers in the area didn’t find a way to move them off the land, some gang like Leroy’s was bound to see Avalon as a plump chicken waiting to be plucked, come in force, and then—

He cut off the thought and took another tack. “If you’re having trouble with branding,” he said, “what do you do when you set up a drive?”

“We supply cattle to Fort Selden and Fort Cummings. We manage very well on our own.”

And they must leave the ranch pretty much undefended at such times, which seemed like sure suicide.

Unreasonable anger gathered in Jacob’s chest. “You think you’ve found some kind of freedom here,” he said harshly, “but this peace won’t last forever.”

She sprang to her feet. “You have no stake in our success or failure,” she said, her voice husky with emotion. “You won’t see any of us ever again once you leave.”

Why did that simple fact make him want to argue with her? She was right. But he still hadn’t learned a damned thing about what drove her. He knew generally why these women had come here, but not what made her so wary of men, or why she would risk so much to prove she didn’t need them. She must have had a father, a brother, maybe even a husband. The thought of her having been bound to any man had a strange effect on his heart. It made him forget to be careful.

“You saved my life,” he said. “That gives me some reason to care what happens to you.”

She froze in the act of turning away, her face caught in a rare moment of vulnerability. “You don’t have to worry,” she said. “We know the risks. We live our own way and make our own rules. No one here has to be afraid…”

She didn’t finish the sentence, but Jacob recognized how close she’d come to revealing something important about herself. She must have realized it as well, for she suddenly broke into a brisk walk and strode out into the darkness.

Jacob could still see her. He knew she wasn’t in any danger, and she wasn’t angry or reckless enough to stray far from the fire.

Still more than a little angry himself, he adjusted his saddle under his head, folded his arms and closed his eyes. Four weeks, at most, he reminded himself. Only four…

He dozed for a while, half-awake as he listened for Serenity’s return. Only when he heard her soft footsteps approaching her bedroll did he allow himself to sink into a deeper sleep, though some part of his wolf senses remained alert.

It was those senses that woke him first when the gun went off. He sprang up, shaking the sleep from his mind and body, and listened for the echo of the distant report.

“What is it?” Serenity asked, her voice muffled as she sat up and pushed her blanket aside.

Of course her human ears hadn’t heard it. “A gunshot,” he said.

In a moment she was on her feet beside him, fully alert. “Where?”

“Two, maybe three, miles to the east,” he said.

Which would be somewhere in the cluster of what passed for foothills not far from the house. Serenity didn’t even ask how he’d heard a shot so far away. Her face went pale in the breaking dawn light.

“Bonnie and Zora,” she said. Without another word, she buckled on her gun belt, ran for the horses and swung up onto her gelding’s bare back. She kicked the horse into a hard run, not waiting to see if Jacob would follow.

He cursed under his breath, mounted his own horse and urged it after her. Serenity obviously knew she couldn’t push the gelding at a full gallop for three miles across the desert, but she never let him fall below a trot, and the horse was willing enough.

Jacob’s own mount proved equally willing. Little by little, he pulled into the lead, knowing that Serenity could only guess where the shot had come from.

He knew. Just as his nose and ears told him that Leroy and three of his men were waiting in ambush in one of the deep arroyos cutting east away from the Organ Mountains.

There was no time to warn Serenity. He cut across her path, forcing her horse to turn with his. He aimed for a jumble of high rocks a dozen yards from the arroyo. Once the horses were behind the rocks he jumped down, grabbed Serenity around the waist and pulled her after him.

Her fists pounded his chest in a drumbeat of panic. Her eyes were wild, though she didn’t make a sound. He wrapped his arms around her.

“Be quiet,” he whispered. “There are men in that arroyo just waiting for us to stumble over them.”

Her rigid body went still. “Leroy’s men?”

She read the answer in his eyes. Her shoulders slumped, and she went limp as the tail of a newborn calf. Just as he was about to release her, she jerked free and put a good dozen feet between them.