Free Heart of the Hunter by Madeline Baker Page A

paying you two for information.”
    “Yessir.”
    “Next time I see you, you’d better have news. I’m getting
damned tired of all this waiting around.”
    “Maybe we can stir something up,” Trask mused.
    “Do that. Now, go on, get out of here. And don’t let anyone
see you leave.”

Chapter Twelve
     
    Kelly stood at the kitchen window watching Lee put the last
coat of paint on the barn. Two days had passed since their ill-fated ride. Two
tension-filled days. Lee had avoided her except at mealtimes and then he had
been sullen and withdrawn.
    She’d been tempted to take her meals in her bedroom, but had
refused to let him chase her out of her own kitchen. If he didn’t like her
company, he could take his meals in the barn!
    Dragging her gaze from his sweat-sheened back and quietly
cursing the fact that he rarely wore a shirt when he worked, she studied the
barn. He’d done a good job, she couldn’t fault him there. The freshly painted
white trim made a vivid contrast to the dark brick-red paint. As soon as he
finished the doors, the barn would be done and he’d start on the house.
    Kelly wrapped her arms around her waist. She should let him
go, she thought. He had warned her that there were wild animals prowling around
and that they weren’t all four-footed. She wondered suddenly if he’d been
warning her against himself.
    She had no doubt that Lee Roan Horse could be a dangerous
man. If she wasn’t careful, he was going to steal her heart.
    At five, he opened the back door and informed her that he
was going into town.
    Startled, Kelly had no time to do more than nod before he
was gone.
    The rest of the day seemed like a week. She hadn’t realized
how accustomed she’d become to Lee’s company, how often she’d looked out the
window to see what he was doing, until he wasn’t around.
    At loose ends, she wandered through the house, seeing things
she hadn’t really paid attention to before, like the old photograph of her
grandparents in the spare bedroom.
    Sitting on the edge of the bed, she studied the couple in
the picture. Her grandfather was sitting in a straight-backed chair, his
expression solemn, a black bowler hat balanced on his knee, but it was her
grandmother’s image that drew Kelly’s eye. Annee McBride stood slightly behind
her husband, one hand on his shoulder.
    Kelly stared at the photo, wondering why people in old
photographs never smiled. Had life in the old days been that hard, or was it
simply “not done”? What had it been like, living back then, when women were
considered nothing more than property, like a man’s horse, when they couldn’t
vote or wear pants or do any number of things that women did today?
    Kelly stared out the window as darkness fell over the land.
Would she have meekly obeyed the rules of the day, or would she have dared to
speak out for what she believed in? Would she have defended a woman’s right to
own property, to vote, to smoke and drink in public?
    Probably not, Kelly mused. She’d never been much of a
fighter. And she wouldn’t have wanted to live back then, either.
    With a sigh, she fell back on the bed and closed her eyes.
    A hand on her arm. A breath of warm air against her neck.
The scent of sage and smoke.
    Only half awake, Kelly opened her eyes and blinked into the
darkness.
    “Tekihila.”
    “Blue Crow.”
    She felt the mattress sag as he sat down beside her.
    “Soft,” he muttered. “How do you sleep on such a thing?”
    Kelly shook her head. “What should I sleep on?”
    “Mother Earth is the best bed.”
    She made a soft sound in her throat, neither agreeing nor
disagreeing, mesmerized by the slash of his profile in the room’s dim light, by
the hypnotic touch of his fingertips slowly gliding up and down the inside of
her forearm.
    “Walk with me, tekihila?”
    At her nod, he took her hand in his and helped her to her
feet.
    Outside, he turned north, walking toward the distant
mountain.
    “Where are we going?” Kelly