Only 05 - Autumn Lover

now.”
    The thought of it made Elyssa smile.
    “Don’t tempt me,” she said, repeating Hunter’s earlier words to her.
    He gave a crack of laughter. Then he touched her mouth with breathtaking tenderness.
    “When the men ride out tonight,” Hunter said in a low voice, “don’t follow. Promise me.”
    Elyssa paled. “Tonight?”
    “Yes.”
    “That’s why you took me to the cave today,” she said starkly. “You were afraid you wouldn’t come back.”
    “I couldn’t leave you with the memory of pain and humiliation. The thought of it…tore at me.”
    “Let me go with you,” she said urgently.
    “No.”
    The word was like Hunter’s expression, hard and inflexible.
    “But—” she began.
    “No. Promise me.”
    “But—”
    “Do you want me to die looking over my shoulder for you?”
    “That isn’t fair!”
    “Do you?” Hunter asked again.
    It was the very softness of his voice that told Elyssa she had lost.
    “Of course not,” she said in a defeated voice.
    “Then stay home.”
     
    Methodically Hunter went through the ranch house and closed all the shutters. Because John Sutton had been a plainsman, an Indian fighter, and a cautious man, he had built heavy wooden shutters on the inside of the house rather than the outside. The shutters were meant to keep out bullets and arrows, not wind and rain.
    Elyssa moved alongside Hunter, followed by the dogs. She had called them into the house to avoid any possibility that they would give away the men’s presence to the raiders.
    As Hunter closed shutters, she opened the gun slits that ran in a vertical line down each shutter. There were slits in the heavy log walls, as well.
    Penny tended to those openings before she took the dogs into her room and shut them up out of the way.
    “Don’t show any light,” Hunter said.
    Elyssa nodded.
    “Someone will come to you after dawn,” Hunter continued. “Sonny, probably. Morgan has done wonders with that boy.”
    “Why can’t I wait for you on the ridge at Wind Gap and—”
    “No,” Hunter interrupted curtly. “You’ve plenty of food and water. Even if a few of the raiders get away from us, you’ll be safe here while we drive the cattle to Camp Halleck.”
    Elyssa closed her eyes and turned away, struggling not to show her fear to Hunter. The terror wasn’t for her own safety.
    It was for his.
    “Elyssa?” Hunter said urgently.
    “I’ll stay. Will you…” Her voice frayed.
    “What?”
    “After you sell the cattle, will you…”
    Come back to me ?
    But Elyssa couldn’t say the words aloud. Those were the words of a sweetheart or a wife, a woman who had some claim to a man’s respect, his trust, his esteem.
    Her only claim was to Hunter’s body.
    “Never mind,” Elyssa whispered. “It doesn’t matter.”
    “Tell me, honey.”
    Closing her eyes, Elyssa shook her head wearily. Tears slipped from beneath her lashes.
    Hunter wanted very much to take her in his arms and kiss away her anxiety, but he knew it would be futile. Elyssa was too intelligent not to understand the danger of this raid to everyone involved.
    What haunted Hunter was that the danger might be even greater to those who stayed behind. His greatest fear was that Ab Culpepper had been waiting to be raided all along.
    It was what Hunter would have done in Ab’s place.
    Pick your killing ground and wait for the enemy tocome to you , Hunter thought in bleak silence. Spring the trap. Pin them down in a cross fire and cut them to ribbons .
    That was just one kind of trap Hunter easily could imagine. Another would be to have a few men engage the enemy…while the rest of your men stole away to wreak havoc elsewhere.
    The Ladder S, for instance .
    The thought was like a lump of ice in Hunter’s gut. It was why he had put off raiding the Culpeppers until time had run out and there was no other choice.
    He was cutting it very fine as it was. There would barely be enough time to drive the cattle to Camp Halleck before the first day of winter.
    Maybe Ab is just lazy rather than wise .
    Maybe .
    Grimly Hunter wished that he had more men to leave behind at the ranch. The Herrera brothers had insisted on going with Hunter, which meant only Lefty and Gimp remained to guard the Ladder S. The old hands were game, but were still only two against however many raiders Ab might throw at them.
    Elyssa and Penny were both good shots, but the idea of them going up against the Culpepper raiders left the brassy taste of fear in Hunter’s