Only 05 - Autumn Lover

need chili eaters on the Ladder S.”
    “What?” Elyssa asked, startled. “When was this?”
    The young man’s pale glance slid from Elyssa’s lips to the shawl wrapped around her breasts. The look was that of someone counting his possessions. But very little of Elyssa’s breasts showed beneath the loose silk.
    Mickey’s expression told her that he had liked it better the other way.
    “Yesterday,” Mickey said.
    “Why didn’t you send for me to interview the man myself?” Elyssa demanded.
    “No need to bother your pretty head, Miss Elyssa. Specially not over no Mex.”
    “Mr. Barber, you have the finesse and intellect of a rockslide,” Elyssa said. “My orders were clear: If a man can ride, rope, and shoot, I want to hire him.”
    “He was a—”
    “Mexican,” Elyssa finished for Mickey. “Some of my finest hands are Mexican. Or were, until the troubles started.”
    “Cowards,” Mickey said.
    “Don’t be more stupid than God made you,” Elyssa said impatiently. “They had wives and children to protect. I couldn’t have them on my conscience. I told them to find work on a safer ranch.”
    She gave Mickey a disgusted look and turned her attention to Hunter.
    “Hunter, you are to hire men without regard to anything except their skill with rope, horse, and gun. Is that clear?”
    The corner of Hunter’s mouth shifted just a little bit. It could have been the beginning of a smile.
    Or it could have been impatience with Elyssa.
    “Yes, ma’am,” he drawled. “Except for one thing.”
    “What’s that?” she asked instantly.
    “Booze. I won’t hire a man with alcohol on his breath. In fact, there will be no tanglefoot in the bunkhouse while I’m ramrod. A drinking man can get himself killed, and a lot of good men with him.”
    Elyssa looked at Mickey with new comprehension.
    “Yes,” she said succinctly. “I agree.”
    “You do that and you won’t have a man left on the place by sundown,” Mickey said belligerently.
    “Oh, I’ll have a man left on the place,” Elyssa said. “His name is Hunter.”
    “Like I said,” Hunter muttered, giving Mickey a look, “there’s just no need to get your water hot over a flirt. It’s something age teaches you, boy.”
    Elyssa’s mouth flattened.
    Mickey simply looked sullen. “I’m foreman of the Ladder S.”
    “Not anymore,” Hunter said mildly.
    “Not ever!” Elyssa said. “I never asked you to be foreman, Mickey. I didn’t like the way you acted toward some of—”
    “Chili eaters,” Mickey snarled. “I should have run them off sooner.”
    Appalled, Elyssa understood too late what had happened to her best hands.
    “You’re fir—” she began.
    “You’re one of three hands we have left,” Hunter said, cutting across Elyssa’s words, “so I’ll give you a chance to make it up to Miss Sutton. Do the work of two men, pour the booze into the privy, and you’ve still got a job. Understand me?”
    Mickey started to argue, looked at Hunter’s eyes, and held his tongue.
    “I’ll be checking out the bunkhouse,” Hunter said. “If I find any booze there, I’ll be purely pissed off and you’ll be walking out of here with no pay in your pocket.”
    Sullenly Mickey nodded.
    “Go on to the bunkhouse and sober up,” Hunter said. “Tell the other hands I’ll talk to them in the morning.”
    Mickey gave Elyssa an angry, baffled look before he turned and stalked back down the aisle.
    As soon as the sound of his footsteps faded, Elyssa turned on Hunter.
    “I don’t care if Mickey is the last hand between here and the Great Salt Lake,” Elyssa said tightly, “I won’t stand for him lording it over anyone who is smaller, kinder, or a different color than he is. If I had known what he was doing to Shorty and Gomez and Raul, I would have—”
    “Gotten somebody killed,” Hunter finished succinctly. “Or were they gun handlers?”
    “No.”
    “Mickey is.”
    Elyssa looked startled.
    “How do you know?” she asked.
    “The soldiers over at Camp Halleck were talking about it. Said your young beau was fast to draw and quicker to shoot.”
    “Mickey? My beau ? Never!”
    “That’s not what they’re saying around Halleck.”
    “I’m not responsible for loose talk.”
    “Flirts have to take the talk as it comes.”
    Elyssa took a slow breath, fighting her temper. When she spoke again, her voice was cool, remote, the voice she had learned to use with good effect on her English cousins.
    “You will believe