Free Sagebrush Bride by Tanya Anne Crosby

for a
breather. As it was, he’d intended to follow her only as long as it took to
change her mind, and then turn around and carry her on to St. Louis.
    This
way, there’d be no wasted time.
    Farther
along, there was a wide place in the road, just a small town, but one big
enough that they might find a place to hang his hat and hitch his horse for the
night... and maybe, if they were lucky, secure another mount for Elizabeth.
Somehow he wasn’t too keen on the notion of riding double anymore.
    Again,
he shook his head and grinned, just thinking of the look of shock she’d wear
when they rambled into town.
    Deuced little hellcat!

Chapter Five
     
    Maybe she was too embarrassed to admit she didn’t
know which direction he’d pointed out?
    Damned Cutter’s guilt wasn’t gnawing at his gut.
    A frown crossed his features as he tore at the
other half of the jerky. He’d tried to give it to her multiple times, but she’d
refused him outright. She needed some kind of sustenance, he knew, so he reached
back into the saddlebags, withdrawing another cut and stepped up his pace,
intending to offer it again, certain the she-wolf was starved by now...
hopefully enough to overlook her stubborn female pride. He shook his head.
    Damned females; you couldn’t live with ’em, and
you couldn’t shoot ’em.
    He studied her stiff back as she marched. She sure
as cuss looked like a woman who thought she knew where she was going; those
feet of hers never faltered once.
    Maybe she was just plain contrary, he decided.
    “Sure you don’t want a lift?” he asked, watching
with ill-concealed amusement as she irritably swatted the chin-high buffalo
grass out of her way. They didn’t have much further to go, but suddenly he
couldn’t wait to see her expression when they happened along town.
    “Thanks, but no thanks, Mr. McKenzie—I’ve
had quite enough of you, as it is!”
    His shoulders shook with mirth. He’d never
understood how a woman could nurse her anger so long. “Cutter,” he asserted,
his lips curling faintly.
     
    “Mr.
McKenzie!” Elizabeth shot back through clenched teeth.
    With every hot mile, her temper grew more foul.
The morning gray of the sky had turned to a cloudless blue, and the sun shone
down without mercy.
    He shook his head in censure, his lips quivering
slightly with laughter. “Now, now, Doc, ain’t no call to be so rude. Just
thought you might like t’ ride, is all. You’ve been on your feet—”
Scanning the puffy blue heavens, he guessed at the time—”oh... a good
hour and a half at least.”
    Didn’t she
know it!
    Coupled with the fall she’d had, the walk was
nearly killing Elizabeth’s poor limbs. Her face flushed with anger as she
turned to glare up at him.
    “Mr. McKenzie, why would I get on that horse with
you? So you can manhandle me again? Why should I trust you?” she asked without
turning.
     
    Cutter had the good graces to flush.
    Hell, he’d forgotten what she’d awakened to, and
felt suddenly like a kid who’d gotten caught with his fingers in the proverbial
cookie jar. He scowled, completely at a loss for words. He wasn’t in the habit
of squeezing women’s limbs while they slept, but he didn’t know how to tell her
so. And he hadn’t touched anything of any importance—not really, just a
leg, and an arm or two, he reasoned. He’d just wanted to be sure that she had
enough meat on her bones… for the journey. She seemed so scrawny.
    The minutes stretched by as he contemplated how to
get around her anger, but any way he looked at it, she had a right to it, and
so in the end he decided just to drop the subject. “Suit yourself,” he
relented.
     
    Elizabeth gave him a puzzled frown.
    There had been a long enough stretch of silence
between them at this point that she’d somehow managed to forget what they’d
been talking about.
    Suit
herself?
    What in creation did the man mean by that remark? Suit herself? Nothing about this
miserable outing suited her in the