Only 05 - Autumn Lover

believed, Leopard had not only thrown the captain, the stud had tried to stomp him flatter than a shadow.
    Bugle Boy blew through his nostrils and tugged at the reins, smelling grain in the big barn beyond.
    Hunter tensed. He expected Leopard to take Bugle Boy as a challenge and start throwing himself at the paddock rails.
    Leopard simply stood and breathed audibly, drinking the strange scents. Then he blew out and fixed his attention on Elyssa once more.
    “Heard he’s a killer,” Hunter said.
    “The captain? I doubt it. The fool probably doesn’t know the loud end of a gun from the quiet.”
    “I meant the stud.”
    “Leopard is a lamb with me.”
    Elyssa’s voice was soft and vibrant with affection for the huge stallion.
    The horse whickered and pushed his nose through the poles in the paddock toward Elyssa. She bent and breathed into Leopard’s nostrils. His ears pricked and he whuffled over her cheek and chin, taking in her scent and her breath.
    She laughed softly.
    The sound went through Hunter like lightning through darkness. He couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to be stroked and murmured over so sweetly, to mingle breaths and then bodies until sweetness turned to fire.
    With a silent curse, Hunter forced his attention back to the big spotted stallion.
    Leopard’s mane and tail were black, full, and very long, proclaiming his ancient Spanish bloodlines. His head was elegantly shaped, black, and held proudly.
    High on the stallion’s muscular neck, small ovals ofwhite appeared among the black hair. The white ovals increased along the deep chest and shoulders and barrel until they consumed the black background color. By the time the stallion’s flanks were reached, white was the dominant color. Large black ovals stood boldly against white on the horse’s rump and hind legs.
    The equine eyes watching Hunter over the paddock railing were wide, black, as unblinking as the night itself. Hunter had the feeling that Leopard was sizing him up as surely as he was sizing up the stud.
    “Sixteen hands?” Hunter asked.
    “You have a good eye.”
    “Do you use him for stud?”
    “Of course.”
    Hunter grunted. “Chancy.”
    “What?”
    “Using a killer for stud. Likely he’ll throw colts as vicious as he is.”
    “Leopard isn’t vicious!”
    “Tell that to the soldiers.”
    “They had no right to rope Leopard and throw him and blindfold him so that—”
    “He couldn’t kill the rider he unloaded into the dirt,” Hunter finished coldly. “Probably the only smart thing that fool captain did.”
    With that, Hunter turned from the stallion to Elyssa. She stood in the moonlight and wind, her skirts swirling like an earthbound cloud. Even in the dim light, the flat, impatient line of Elyssa’s mouth was visible.
    “In any case,” Hunter said in a clipped voice, “the army has every right to conscript suitable mounts, no matter whose pet the horse might be. The Paiutes have been raiding along the Oregon Trail.”
    “Or Culpepper trash dressed as Indians have been raiding.”
    “Either way, the army has its work cut out.”
    “We’ve had no trouble with Indians here.”
    “Yet.”
    Hunter’s certainty rankled Elyssa. Impulsively she pushed away from the paddock and confronted the dangerous stranger.
    “I’m surprised to hear you take the army’s part,” Elyssa said.
    “Why?”
    “Not so long ago, they were your enemy. Or,” she added rashly, “did you get that greatcoat behind your saddle from a Confederate officer whose luck ran out?”
    “I don’t steal from the dead.”
    Hunter’s voice was calm, soft, and all the more dangerous for it.
    “That’s not what I meant,” Elyssa said.
    “Then what did you mean.”
    It wasn’t a question. It was a demand.
    “That you purchased the greatcoat,” Elyssa said, “the same way Mother and Father purchased furniture and farm animals from settlers on their way west.”
    Hunter just looked at her.
    “It happens a lot,” Elyssa pointed out. “Most of the people who go west can’t believe what Nevada will be like. My English cousins thought I was lying when I talked about rivers that dried up long before they reached the sea, and lakes that evaporated into salt crystals every summer.”
    Finally, curtly, Hunter nodded, accepting that Elyssa hadn’t meant to insinuate that he was a grave robber.
    Yet it was an effort for Hunter not to show the fury that had swept over him when Elyssa had seemed to describe him as no