Free Elizabeth Lowell by Reckless Love

herbal tea for Mad Jack.
    “Sorry, gal,” he said said, watching her work. “If I’d thunk about it, I wouldn’t’ve opened my trap. You want I should stay with you?”
    She shook her head. “It’s not necessary. I know how restless you get after you’ve been in camp for a few hours. Ty’s mad, but he’ll get over it.”
    “That wasn’t what I meant. Now that he knows you’re a female, maybe you won’t be wanting to be alone with him.”
    “There won’t be any problem,” she said unhappily. “You heard him. He thinks I’m about as appealing as a fence post.” She shrugged, trying to appear casual about her lack of feminine allure.
    Mad Jack’s faded eyes watched Janna shrewdly. “And you be kinda wishin’ it was otherwise,” he said after a moment.
    She opened her mouth to object forcefully, then realized there was no point in denying the truth, no matter how painful that truth might be.
    “Yes, I’d like to be attractive to him. What woman wouldn’t? He’s all man,” Janna said. She added a pinch of herbs to the tiny pot. “And he’s a good man. Even when he was half out of his head with pain, his first instinct was still to protect me rather than himself. He’d never force himself on me.” She grimaced and added wryly, “Not that he’d ever have the chance. I’d probably say yes so quick it would make his head spin.”
    Mad Jack hesitated, then sighed. “Gal, I don’t know how much your pa told you about babies and such, but more women have spent their lives wishin’ they’d said no than otherwise. When the urge is ridin’ a man, he’ll talk sweet as molasses and promise things he has no damn intention of giving.”
    “Ty wouldn’t lie to me like that.”
    “You can’t rightly call it lyin’. When a man’s crotch is aching, he don’t know lies from truth,” the old man said bluntly. “It’s natural. If menfolk stood around wonderin’ what was right instead of doin’ what come natural like, there wouldn’t be enough babies to keep the world goin’.”
    She made a neutral sound and stirred the herbal tea. Despite the faint suggestion of red on his weathered face, Mad Jack forged ahead with his warning about the undependable nature of men.
    “What I’m tryin’ to say,” he muttered as he dug around in his stained shirt pocket for a plug of tobacco, “is that’s a big stud hoss you found, and he’s getting right healthy again. He’ll be waking up hard as stone of a mornin’ and he’ll be lookin’ for a soft place to ease what’s aching.”
    Janna ducked her head, grateful for the floppy brim of the hat concealing her face. She didn’t know whether to throw the steaming tea at the old man or to hug him for trying to do what he was obviously ill-suited to do, which was to be a Dutch uncle to a girl who had no family.
    “Now, I know I’m being too blunt,” Mad Jack continued doggedly, “but dammit, gal, you ain’t got no womenfolk to warn you about a man’s ways. Next thing you know, you’ll be gettin’ fat, and I can tell you flat out it won’t be from nothing you et.”
    “Your tea is ready.”
    “Gal, you understand what I been sayin’?”
    “I know where babies come from and how they get there, if that’s what you mean,” she said succinctly.
    “That’s what I mean,” he mumbled.
    She glanced up and made an irritated sound as she saw that he was sawing away on a plug of tobacco with his pocketknife. “No wonder your stomach is as sour as last month’s milk. That stuff would gag a skunk.”
    Dry laughter denied her words. “I’m at the age when a good chew is my only comfort. That and finding a mite of gold here and there. I done right well for myself since your pa died. I been thinking ‘bout it, and I done decided. I want you to take some gold and get shuck of this place.”
    The immediate objections that came to Janna’s lips were overridden by Mad Jack, who didn’t stop speaking even while he pushed a chunk of tobacco into his