Free Foxfire Bride by Maggie Osborne

good with languages."
    "You speak Indian?" Brown asked, sounding impressed.
    Fox looked pained. "I can speak to Paiutes, Shoshones, and Utes. If an Apache shows up, we're in trouble."
    "Say something in Indian," Hanratty said.
    The firelight made both men look worse than they had in daylight. Deep shadow darkened black swollen eyes, while a burst of flame made cuts and scrapes appear livid.
    "If you had an Indian name, it would be Mean and Ugly," Fox said, speaking Shoshone. From the corner of her eye, she saw Peaches smile. He knew just enough to catch the drift of what she'd said. She winked at him.
    "What did you say?" Hanratty demanded, looking from Fox to Peaches.
    She stood and stretched. "I said it's been a long day and tomorrow will be, too. We'll go as far as the Sand Springs station."
    In the morning they all inspected the arrows driven into the gate as they rode out of the adobe enclosure. Fox was glad that Hanratty hadn't been on the platform overlooking the front or there would have been some dead Paiute kids. Hanratty and Brown were hard men to like.
    "We were lucky yesterday," Tanner said, riding up beside her leading Peaches's string of mules. When Fox lifted an eyebrow, he shrugged. "Mr. Hernandez didn't complain, but I could see his shoulder is troubling him."
    Just when Fox thought she had Tanner figured, he did something or said something that showed her how wrong she was. She had decided he preferred to remain aloof, wanted to draw a line between himself and his employees. Now here he was doing Peaches's work, leading a string of mules.
    "If Hanratty or Brown had been on the platform we were on"
    Fox's eyes widened. This wasn't the first time he'd said the same thing she was thinking. What did that mean? Anything? When she slid him a glance, his expression was tight.
    "You're carrying a lot of money," she said in case he was having second thoughts about hiring guards. Defending Hanratty and Brown wasn't a comfortable position, but Fox suspected the time would come when she'd be glad to have two extra guns present. "They're keeping up, doing their share of the work."
    Tanner gave her an unreadable look then squinted against the grains of sand blowing on a sharp breeze. "How long will we be camping in abandoned pony express stations?"
    "Until we reach Utah territory. Then the pony express stations turn north and we continue east."
    "It's a smart choice." He spoke slowly as if he'd given the matter some thought. "If we'd been in the open last night, things might have gone differently."
    "You aren't complaining that you're not getting your money's worth? That you could have found the stations on your own?" She wasn't sure if she was teasing or not.
    "I'm getting my money's worth," he said firmly. A smile curved his lips. "Left to my own devices, I could wander around out here for days looking for the next station."
    Fox laughed. "I doubt that, but it's nice of you to say so."
    Tanner had weighty matters on his mind and it didn't surprise her that he seldom smiled. When he did, his face softened and his mouth relaxed. Those occasional smiles made Fox's scalp tingle and her mouth go dry, which annoyed her no end.
    During the next two days, whenever the hours in the saddle turned dull and tedious, she tried to pin down what it was about Matthew Tanner that caused her body to respond in rebellious ways that she didn't welcome.
    He was a different sort of man than she usually encountered. Better educated, better dressed, more mannerly. Confident enough that he could ask questions if he didn't know something. And he was willing to stand back and recognize Fox's expertise without appearing that it cost him anything to do so.
    Moreover, Tanner seemed wealthy and his father even more so. Whenever Fox tried to grasp how much money fifty thousand dollars actually was, her brain froze. Last night she'd given Peaches a hand moving the coins, slinging a bag over her shoulder and wincing at the weight. The bags weighed