Only 05 - Autumn Lover

.”
    Hunter closed his eyes. Silently he struggled to control the rage inside his soul.
    When he opened his eyes, he found himself in the present rather than the ruined past. He looked down at Elyssa’s fingers. They were wrapped around his wrist in a painful grip.
    “Torturing yourself won’t help,” Elyssa said urgently. “It’s over, Hunter. They’re dead and you’re alive. Tormenting yourself won’t help them one bit.”
    Slowly Hunter’s eyes focused on Elyssa.
    “I wasn’t there when they needed me,” Hunter said in a raw voice. “My kids died and I wasn’t even there.”
    “I’m sorry,” Elyssa whispered. “Oh, Hunter, I’m so sorry.”
    And she was. For his children. For his dead wife. For Hunter.
    For herself.
    Elyssa finally understood why Hunter refused to let himself love her. It wasn’t that he had loved his first wife so much.
    It was that he had been betrayed by her.
    Hunter jerked his wrist from Elyssa’s grasp, as though her touch was distasteful to him.
    “Stop sneaking off to see Bill,” Hunter said harshly. “After I bury those damned Culpeppers, you can move in with Bill for all I care. But not until.”
    “I’m not like Belinda. I love Bill, but not in that way.”
    Hunter’s upper lip curled in silent disbelief.
    “I saw four Culpeppers,” he said. “Were there any more?”
    Elyssa wanted to argue about the differences between herself and Belinda, but a look at Hunter’s eyes convinced her that now was the wrong time.
    Maybe tomorrow.
    Or the day after.
    Maybe by then Hunter would be more reasonable.
    Maybe by then his eyes wouldn’t look like clear black slices of hell.
    “I didn’t see any other Culpeppers,” Elyssa said. “There was another man, though.”
    Hunter watched her with unnerving intensity.
    “I think he was the most dangerous of all,” she said.
    “You recognized him?”
    “No. Not by name.”
    “Then how do you know he’s dangerous?”
    Elyssa blew out a soft breath. Some of the deadly chill was leaving Hunter’s voice.
    “By the way he didn’t move,” she said simply.
    “What does that mean?”
    “Most men fidget or shift their weight or fiddle with their mustache or their cartridge belt or something.”
    Hunter waited, motionless. His very stillness reminded Elyssa of the other man.
    “This man didn’t move except to breathe,” Elyssa said. “He wasn’t keyed up or frightened or bloodthirsty or anything at all. He was just…ready.”
    “For what?”
    “Whatever came. He would take it, whatever it was, without flinching. As though nothing could touch him but death, and death held no terrors for him. Like you were when you first came to the ranch.”
    Bugle Boy snorted and pulled against the bit.
    Hunter ignored the horse. The realization that he had missed one of the men surrounding Elyssa made him deeply uneasy.
    “I didn’t see him,” Hunter said.
    “He was standing apart from the Culpeppers.”
    “What did he look like?”
    “He was…”
    Elyssa’s voice faded. She looked at Hunter.
    “He was rather like you in height and build,” she said finally. “Or maybe it was just that he was wearing bits of an old Confederate uniform that made me think of you.”
    “Left-or right-handed?”
    “Six-gun in one hand and a repeating rifle in the other.”
    Hunter smiled thinly. “No wonder he wasn’t worried.”
    “And moccasins,” Elyssa said.
    “Moccasins?” Hunter asked, his voice sharp.
    “Yes. He was wearing knee-high moccasins. Fringed. Like Apache moccasins.”
    Elyssa tilted her head to one side as a thought occurred to her.
    “I don’t think,” she said, “that anyone else saw him. He just sort of appeared at the edge of a willow thicket when the mist cleared.”
    “Fringed moccasins,” Hunter repeated softly. “Be damned.”
    Elyssa stared. There was a blending of emotions in Hunter’s voice that intrigued her. Affection was one emotion. Respect was another. Anticipation was a third.
    But it was compassion that gave Hunter’s voice a gentleness that was startling.
    “Do you know him?” she asked.
    “Maybe. A lot of men wear moccasins.”
    “Not all that many, surely.”
    Hunter smiled. “I’ve been known to myself, when I was on the stalk.”
    “Who is he?”
    “If he’s who I think he is, you’re right. That boy wasn’t the least bit worried about what would happen next.”

16
    T hat night, long after everyone was asleep, a stair creaked softly under Hunter’s weight.
    Damnation