Only 05 - Autumn Lover

of it.”
    “I suspected,” Bill said a moment later, “but I was too drunk to care.”
    Penny made a low sound and touched Bill’s face. He smiled at her gently.
    “By the time Penny made me see the foolishness of my ways,” Bill said, “the Culpeppers had started moving in. Mac didn’t like it one bit, but he couldn’t stop it.”
    “So he staged his ‘death’ and threw in with the Culpeppers?” Hunter asked.
    Bill nodded.
    Hunter threw a narrow look in Mac’s direction.
    “If he lives,” Hunter said, “I should hang the son of a bitch.”
    Elyssa opened her mouth but could find no words to equal the icy rage in Hunter’s eyes. The appalled sound she made brought his attention back to her.
    “I won’t see a man hanged for rustling,” Elyssa said.
    “Neither would I,” Hunter said flatly. “But Mac tried to kill you three times that I know of.”
    “What?” she asked, shaken.
    “He used that longhorn bull, and a landslide, and then took aim with a gun the night he salted your garden.”
    “Mac?” Elyssa asked in a strained voice. “He hated me that much? But why? What did I ever do to him?”
    “It wasn’t you he hated,” Bill said. “It was Gloria.”
    “What do you mean?” Elyssa asked.
    “Mac and John were partners until Gloria came along,” Bill said. “Mac never forgave her for changing things.”
    “What does that have to do with me?” Elyssa whispered.
    “You look so much like her, sometimes—” Bill hesitated and said simply, “Sometimes it’s like being cut with a knife.”
    Elyssa shook her head, not wanting to believe that Mac had hated her enough to kill her.
    “ Sassy. ”
    At first Elyssa thought she had imagined the whisper. Then it came again.
    “ Sassy. ”
    Slowly she turned toward the corner where Mac lay dying.
    Hunter reached the cot before Elyssa did. His hard arm barred her from coming within Mac’s reach.
    “I’m here, Mac,” Elyssa said.
    “Where?” he whispered. “Can’t see.”
    Elyssa stepped around Hunter’s arm and took Mac’s hand.
    “Right here,” she said softly.
    Mac’s eyes focused on her.
    “You know—my brand,” he said painfully.
    “The Slash River?” she asked.
    “Give it—to you.” He took a sharp breath. “Sorry.”
    “Don’t talk,” Elyssa said. “Save your strength for getting well.”
    Something close to a smile crossed Mac’s face, shifting the line of his gray-streaked beard. When he spoke, his voice was stronger, as though he was drawing on a last reserve of strength.
    “I’m dying, Sassy.”
    Elyssa caught her breath and squeezed Mac’s hand gently.
    “Damned whoring Culpeppers,” Mac said, his voice hoarse and laced with contempt. “Just had to have a female. Stole a Ute gal.”
    Elyssa’s eyelids flinched.
    “Fools,” Mac said. “Told ’em so. Then I—went to the marsh.”
    Mac drew several shallow breaths. Each one told ofthe pain that was consuming him as deeply and finally as death.
    “It was you,” Hunter said. “You shot Gaylord before he could shoot Elyssa.”
    Slowly Mac glanced to Hunter and then back to Elyssa again, focusing on her clothing.
    “Looked like a man,” Mac said painfully. “Fought like one. Bravest thing—ever saw. Couldn’t let them—kill you. Ab figured it was me. Gutshot me—so I’d die—slow—hard.”
    Mac’s breath came out with a long, unraveling sound. The hand Elyssa was holding went limp.
    Tears she couldn’t stop fell down her cheeks and dropped onto Mac’s hand.
    Mac didn’t feel it. He was finally beyond feeling anything at all.
    In a way Elyssa almost envied him, for she knew her greatest pain was yet to come.
    When Hunter realized what had happened, he drew the blanket over Mac’s face and turned to Elyssa.
    “Don’t cry, honey,” Hunter said roughly. “He isn’t worth your tears.”
    “I’m not crying only for him,” she whispered. “I’m crying for all of it, the pain and anger and betrayal of the past. What a tangled, bitter legacy.”
    For a moment Hunter was silent. Elyssa sensed he was remembering his own past, his own betrayal, his own bitter legacy of pain and rage.
    That was the most savage part of Elyssa’s pain. She could touch her own past, cry for it, even heal from it in time…but she could not touch Hunter’s past. She could not heal him.
    She could only lose him.
    No, that’s not quite true , Elyssa told herself with painful honesty. I can’t lose what I never had.
    Hunter never gave himself to