The Men of Pride County: The Rebel (10 page)

Across the parade ground, the glowing tip of a cigar flared against the chill of Noble Banning’s stare. He smiled wryly as he watched Juliet draw the window curtains shut with a snap, sealing the intimacy of the Crowleys’ dinner from his intrusive view. It was almost as if she’d guessed he was standing there, but he knew that was not the reason.

A smart woman.

A difficult and possibly dangerous woman because of the way she distracted him from his cause.

He wasn’t at Fort Blair to play tin soldier for the Union Army. He had another agenda, one he’d foolishly let slip out to the wrong person
over volumes on history’s greatest traitors. He wasn’t at Fort Blair to play patty finger games with the daughter of the Federal officer who’d turned one of his own against him. Juliet Crowley couldn’t matter to him. He couldn’t afford to care if she was witty and bright and parried insults like a fencing foil. He couldn’t afford to note that he found her piercing honesty more appealing than the cultivated charms of all the women he’d known.

He couldn’t afford to let her get under his skin, because what he was doing was probably going to hurt her. He didn’t want to suffer for her disillusionment.

He’d let down too many before her, and they were the ones that had to matter to him now, because they could not defend themselves from the grave against the one who had betrayed them.

Juliet Crowley’s pain was a small price to pay for the eternal peace of those he’d seen buried.

And so was his own.

Chapter 7

In the relative cool of the morning, at a sandy riverbed within sight of the post, the men of Fort Blair began the bone-rattling job of saddle-breaking their new mounts. There was nothing elegant or tidy about the process.

Since Banning and the other new arrivals had come on fresh horses, the mustangs were paired with the Union regulars at the fort. These men were expected to get on and ride until the animals were subjugated. It seemed a simple task, considering how worn and wobbly the beasts appeared only days before.

How quickly the harmless-looking creatures reverted to seething masses of manes and flying hooves when the foreign weight of a man climbed onto its back.

Drawn by the explosive drama, Juliet stood off to one side, enjoying the show of man’s attempt to dominate the wild. And the three-dollar broomtails were the wildest things on
four legs that she’d ever seen. Once roped, the horses were blindfolded, then bridled and saddled. When they stood trembling and twitching, a soldier slipped onto saddle leather for the often short-lived ride of his life. Squealing, biting, kicking, whirling in defiance of gravity, the animals bucked and shimmied until their riders ploughed sand with their chins.

Along the ridge of the dry creekbed, the Southerners lounged in amusement, placing bets and jeering at the clumsiness of their Northern counterparts, who had no idea of how to best a green horse. Noble Banning loitered with them, sharing their humor, as the bruised and disheartened riders picked themselves up time after time, their tempers growing ever shorter.

Miles Dougherty was one of the men becoming annoyed by their goading audience. He’d picked a big smoke-colored stallion and wore an expression that brooked no nonsense. After glaring at Noble, he gave Juliet a tight-lipped smile, then climbed aboard for a jarring four-second ride. As he picked himself up from the dust, he bristled at the sound of Noble’s laughter.

“Sure you don’t want me and my boys to show you how it’s done, Major? No sense you all getting your uniforms dirty. Why, those critters are probably so tuckered out from tossing you in the air that we could sit ’em like hobbyhorses and never break a sweat.”

Miles beat the dust from his hat against his
thigh. “No thank you, Banning. We’ll manage just fine.”

“Manage to end up with half your men in the infirmary, you mean.” His men whooped in appreciation. Noble grinned to encourage them. “Why don’t we take the starch out of them for you?”

“We’ll manage,” he repeated through grinding teeth, trying not to limp.

Unwilling to just sit by and ignore the heckling, Juliet thought it time to insert her opinion.

“Miles, Papa wouldn’t want you to take any risks with the welfare of your men,” Juliet suggested practically, earning his stabbing glare. “As Major Banning has said often enough, his men were raised on horseback. Why not let them entertain you for a while. After all, it’s
their
bruised … pride.”

Miles considered her logic, then lifted a challenging brow along with the reins of the snorting gray to Noble. “Show me how easy it is, Major.”

At the loud cheering of his men, Noble slid down the embankment to take the leads. Miles and the other Northern soldiers quickly scrambled clear, hoping to give Noble enough room to break his fool neck. Grinning at his men, Noble then turned to salute Juliet as Miles had done. She answered him with cool disdain, refusing to accept him as champion even as her pulse accelerated.

His easy air of confidence wouldn’t help but
inspire admiration as he carefully fitted one boot into a stirrup and swung astride, touching off a powder keg of furious energy. Despite all the animal’s jerky leaps and dizzying revolutions, Noble clung like a burr, refusing to be parted from saddle leather. Moving as one with the fiery stallion, he made the ride look more like a graceful dance than a display of brutal mastery.

Soon, the animal knew it had been bested, its jumps growing less frequent, less high, its struggles more subdued, until finally it circled the sandy wash at a snorting canter while Noble’s men hollered and waved their hats in the air.

The breath gushed from Juliet. She was dangerously close to forgetting herself in the thrill of the moment. She found she was quivering just as much as the vanquished beast. The man was liquid poetry in the way he rode—strong, fluid, in control. Exciting. Too exciting for her vow of disinterest.

Noble’s triumphant grin eased to a subtle curve as their eyes met and held. How could he not notice her vivacious coloring and the jewel-like brilliance of her gaze that suggested everything she couldn’t say?

And how could Miles Dougherty miss the same display?

“A right fancy ride, Major Banning.” Miles’s retort broke the exchange of questing looks between the Southerner and his colonel’s daughter. “But just because the animal’s tired out
now doesn’t mean he’s fit for a soldier to take into the field tomorrow.”

Noble’s smile took a wry bend. “Why, Major Dougherty, this here animal is tame enough for a lady’s pet. Or are you afraid to find out for yourself?”

Hoots of laughter came from the Southerners while Miles flushed at the insult.

Seeing the potential for trouble brewing, Juliet stepped forward to intercede.

“If that animal is docile enough for a lady, I should have no difficulty, should I, Major Banning?”

Noble’s amusement ebbed as he read the challenge in her stare. His smile grew indolent. “I guess you’ll just have to take my word for it, ma’am.”

Juliet began tugging on her gloves. “Since I seem to have some problem in that area, I guess I’ll just have to find out for myself, won’t I?”

Realizing her intent, Miles tried to still her stubbornness with a hand on her arm. “Jules, you don’t have to prove his case for him. Or disprove it at a risk to yourself.”

Juliet never looked away from Noble’s steady stare. “Unless Major Banning is a complete liar who’s trying to make fools of us all, I shall be perfectly safe. Which is it, sir? Liar or gentleman?”

Noble swung down from the sweaty stallion and extended the reins. “At your service, Miz Crowley.”

More worried now, Miles tightened his grip. “Jules—”

She placed her hand over his in what looked like a tender gesture but was actually a way to pry his fingers loose. “Now, Miles, by your very attitude you are questioning Major Banning’s word.”

“You’re damned right I am. Jules, this is madness. Your father—”

“Would trust my judgment. And you,” she concluded coolly, “are not my father.” She peeled away his hand and slid down the crumbling embankment to where Noble Banning waited to call her bluff.

She smiled at him thinly, knowing he thought she was playing some game to make Miles jealous. If she was indeed playing a game, it was not for Miles’s benefit. She came to a stop between Noble and the nervous stallion.

“Would you like me to help you extricate yourself from this silly attempt to impress your … friend?” Noble asked her.

She matched the cynical softness of his words. “I’d like you to help me into the saddle.”

He frowned slightly, aware at last that she meant to go through with her impulsive plan. He took a step back. “I’m not going to help you break your neck.”

Her smile was killingly sweet. “But I thought you said you’d made this beast into a docile lamb—the perfect ladies’ mount. Are
you saying now that I am not a lady?”

“You are that, ma’am. And reckless to boot.”

She lifted her foot and arched an impatient brow. “Sir? Will you help, or not?”

He cupped his hands beneath her boot and gave a powerful boost that almost sent her over the animal’s back. Experience helped her catch her balance and right herself in the saddle. She gathered the reins, feeling the stallion bunch in anticipation.

“Stand clear, Major Banning. Let’s see if you are a man of your word.”

The moment he moved back, Juliet set her heels into the animal’s flanks. The horse lunged forward, surging up the embankment in a pair of mighty leaps. And horse and rider were gone.

“Son of a—”

Noble glanced around for a ready mount, snatching the reins of a half-wild horse from a startled corporal. He rolled up into the saddle, and before the animal could think to protest, Noble kicked it into a galloping pursuit.

As the horse’s wild plunging leveled out into an all-out run, Juliet gave it its head and lifted her own to the rip of the wind. Her hat tore loose, freeing her hair to stream out behind her in a rippling golden banner. The sense of glorious abandon was worth the thought of Miles’s distress and even her father’s scolding that was sure to follow. Worth
anything to humble the smug Noble Banning. Imagining his chagrin, she nudged the gray into stretching his legs.

They thundered across the open desert, scaring up the occasional jackrabbit and vaulting over rainwater runoff cracks. The wild race let her throw off the remnants of city life, the feeling of being hemmed in and restrained while living in another’s house, living by another’s rules for three long years. There she hadn’t been able to shake out her hair or taunt fate or do anything that made her revel in the joy of simply being alive.

Feeling as though she and the horse were the only beings within miles, Juliet was startled by the sudden shadow of a man and another horse drawing alongside them. Before she could react, Noble reached fearlessly out to snag her reins, yanking back on hers and his at the same time to slow their mounts together.

Noble Banning didn’t look impressed by her skill in the saddle.

He looked furious.

“Are you crazy?” he yelled at her. “What are you trying to do, get yourself killed, pulling a stunt like that?”

She jerked her reins away from him and snapped back, “If you thought I’d be in danger, why did you goad me into it?”

“Because I didn’t think you’d be insane enough to go through with it.”

She bristled up in her own defense. “I am
hardly insane. I’ve probably been riding as long as you have. Did you think I’d spent my last twenty years huddling in a wagon?”

“I don’t know what to think where you’re concerned,” he admitted angrily. “Other than that a man’d have to be crazy himself to tangle with you.”

Her voice lowered to a husky rumble. “Then why did you follow me, Major Banning?”

Her question took him off guard. The furious pace of his breathing faltered, then resumed with a raspy chuckle as he shook his head. “I guess I must be crazy. Now be a good girl, Miz Crowley, and come back to the fort with me before we end up with our hair on some Indian’s lodgepole.”

She smirked at him, showing off her superior knowledge. “Indians don’t venture this close to the fort unless it’s to steal livestock. And that’s not likely to happen in broad daylight.”

“But maybe they
are
as crazy as we are. Did you ever think of that?”

“Then after you, Major Banning.”

“After you, Miz Crowley.”

“Why, sir, don’t you trust me?”

He laughed at her attempted drawl. “We’ll ride together,” was his solution.

They started back toward the post, letting the horses catch their breath at an easy lope.

“You’re a fine horsewoman, Juliet.” His compliment would have been enough, but the way he said her name caressed like a drip of warm honey. He took advantage of her silence
to add, “You’re accomplished in many unusual areas.”

“Compared to your dainty girls back home?”

He didn’t miss her searing sarcasm. “Compared to just about any lady I’ve ever known, and I met quite a few Northern girls while attending Harvard.”

Her quick turn toward him set her mount prancing to one side. She controlled it more easily than she did her own surprise. “Harvard?”

“Do you find it so hard to believe that this disreputable liar should have a passion for the law and seek to learn it in the best possible arena?”

She considered his shrewd intelligence and his unswerving directness. “No.”

But then why was a man who professed to love the law determined to pursue the one he thought guilty of treason outside its parameters? She stewed on that for a moment, but her mood was too buoyant to dwell on it for long.

“What made you choose the law, Major?”

“Call me Noble. There’s no one out here to protest the informality.”

“Do you come from a family of lawyers—Noble?”

He laughed, a soft mocking sound. “My father knows all about the law, all right. As a politician, he knows his way around all of them.”

“So you went into the legal profession to
help him?” She couldn’t keep the disappointment from abrading her tone or suppress her wish that he’d prove her wrong in this.