Wyoming Wildfire (Harlequin Historical) (12 page)

She risked a glance toward Matt. Amazingly, she saw that he was pulling back, slowing his horse just enough to let her gain the lead.

The crowd screamed as the mare sprinted across the finish line, barely a hand’s breadth ahead of the gelding. On their flanks, the other racers thundered past. Jessie had won the race. But it was a hollow victory.

Gypsy had slowed to a dancing walk. Matt hovered nearby, but Jessie refused to look at him. A horse race was an affair of honor, and his letting her win was the ultimate insult to her own prowess as a rider and Gypsy’s prowess as a horse. Oh, yes, let the
little woman win. Toss her a few crumbs, then watch her fall at your feet! He must be feeling wonderful about himself right now!

The crowd pressed close as the mayor stepped forward with the leather pouch in his hand—the pouch that contained the traditional prize of five ten-dollar gold eagles. He held it out to Jessie. “Congratulations, young man,” he boomed. “Well done!”

Jessie’s gaze dropped to her hands, white-knuckled where they clutched the reins.
Don’t be a fool!
her practical side argued.
Take the money! You need it! That’s why you came!

Everyone was looking at her, waiting. She was beginning to feel sick. The mayor’s florid face with its thick, curling mustache swam before her eyes. She could feel Matt’s presence behind her. Oh, why had he done this to her? Why couldn’t he have left well enough alone?

In her side vision, she could see Virgil and Lillian standing near the front of the crowd. Only then did she realize that her hat had blown back and was hanging behind her shoulders. Any minute now, they’d be liable to recognize her.

Cold panic welled in Jessie’s throat. Her eyes shifted like a trapped animal’s, frantic to find an escape. Why had she come here today? She couldn’t take the money, couldn’t stay. All she wanted was to get out of this place.

Seeing a thin spot in the crowd, she swung her horse and pushed her way through. The mayor gaped after her, the leather pouch still dangling from his fingers.

“What do you think you’re doing, boy?” He shouted after her. “Come back here!”

Jessie paid him no attention. The open, grassy flat lay before her. Beyond that was the road back to the mountains—her mountains, her refuge.

She dug her heels into the mare’s flanks and they shot toward the hills.

“I’ll take that!” Matt snatched the money pouch from the mayor’s hand, swung up onto his horse and charged after Jessie at a gallop. She had only a narrow head start on him, and he felt confident that he could catch her. But he didn’t want to do it within sight of the curious townspeople. He was more interested in getting her alone, or better yet, trailing her to her secret lair. The lady owed him an explanation, and he didn’t want any interruptions.

He held Copper in check for the first few miles, letting her get a comfortable lead as the trail wound up through the sage-covered hills and into the aspen forests. For now, at least, she was simply trying to outrun him, making no effort to hide her tracks. But Matt knew that when her mount began to tire, she’d be apt to take evasive action. Matt was an experienced
tracker, but Jessie had grown up in these mountains and knew every foot of them. Trailing her would be a challenge. He would have to be alert for every trick.

Frankly, he was looking forward to the contest.

The sight of her in the lineup for the race had jolted him. Sheridan was the last place he’d expected to see her. She must have been desperate for cash to come to such a public gathering. Well, she was going to get the money she’d won, and she was going to take it, blast her, if he had to cram every coin into her stubborn little—”

But now he was getting emotional, Matt cautioned himself. In dealing with Jessie, he would need to keep a cool head—easier said than done, when just being around her strained his self-control to the breaking point. Where the ladies were concerned, Matt had always prided himself on being a gentleman. But maddening Jessie Hammond could shatter his composure with a flash of her gentian eyes and transform him into a beast with a word. As for those soft lips and that devil-made body…even now, the memory of her quivering release in his arms caused him to swell against the saddle.

Matt cursed out loud, purpling the air as he vented his frustration. Here he was, galloping after a woman in a fever of lust, something he’d never done before in his life. But if that was his reason for chasing Jessie, he needed to stop and turn back right now. Un
less he could do his duty—give her the money, escort her to the Tolliver Ranch and walk away—he’d be doing them both more harm than good.

Ahead, he could see where she’d turned her mare off the trail and headed up the slope toward the creek. Oldest tactic in the book, he observed. She would ride upstream, letting the water cover her tracks until she found a good place to come out onto the bank. Trailing her would be a simple matter of finding the spot where she left the creek.

A smile tightened his lips as he guided Copper along the clear line of hoofprints. In his career as a lawman, Matt had tracked down outlaws and renegades who knew every evasive trick ever devised. Following one small woman should be easy enough. Shouldn’t it?

Jessie lay flat at the top of an overhanging ledge, peering down at the slope below. Her keen eyes inspected the clumps of spruce and aspen and the rocky escarpments that rose among them. She could see no movement; nor could she hear any sound except the twitter of birds, the rush of the nearby waterfall, and the soft nicker of her mare, waiting in the trees a dozen yards behind her.

Praise be, had she finally lost him?

She had spent most of the afternoon trying to throw Matt off her trail. She had cut across streams
and rock slides, laid false tracks, zigzagged and doubled back on her own path. Once he’d passed within a stone’s throw of the place where she was hiding, but he’d discovered her trick minutes later. She had barely gotten away without being caught.

Matt was a superb tracker; there was no denying that. But Jessie had learned from the best, her father. She and Frank had grown up playing their own version of hide-and-seek in the mountains, taking turns at tracking and evasion. No one could catch her when she didn’t want to be caught.

So why didn’t she want to be caught now? Was it because she knew Matt would try to give her the prize money, and she was too proud to take it? Was it because he might arrest her for arson and haul her back to Sheridan in handcuffs, the way he’d taken Frank? Was it because she hated him? Or was it because she was afraid
not
to hate him?

The searing moments she’d spent in Matt’s arms had left her raw and vulnerable. Those feelings had come rushing back when she saw him at the race. Right then, she’d known that she couldn’t face him. He had too much power over her—power to crush and wound and shame her. Running was the only way to protect herself.

But now the sun was hanging low in the sky, streaking the clouds with the first blush of color. In less than an hour twilight would be setting in, and she
was still several miles from the cabin. She was not anxious to be stranded in these ledges after dark, especially with Gypsy. There was too much danger from unseen drop-offs, not to mention wolves and cougars.

Matt would be stranded, too, unless he’d given up and turned back. She could only hope she’d lost him. Either way, it was time to head for the shelter of the cabin.

“Jessie!” Matt’s voice echoed from the hollow. “I know you’re up there! Stop this crazy game and come down here before you get hurt! Now!” He sounded weary, frustrated and plain mad. Jessie kept her silence, still hoping he’d give up and leave.

“I’ve got a message for you! It’s good news! You’ll want to hear it!”

His voice came from somewhere below her, close to the base of the cliffs. She inched forward, trying to look down and see him through the heavy screen of brush. It had to be a trick, she told herself. If he really had a message, why didn’t he just give it to her?

“Blast it, woman, answer me!” His furious shout echoed off the canyon walls, startling a pair of doves into noisy flight. Back in the trees, Gypsy snorted and began to dance nervously. Jessie knew the signs. If she didn’t get her mare under control, the skittish creature could bolt and leave her stranded.

Working her knees under her body, Jessie rose to
a crouch. “Settle down, girl,” she murmured. “It’s all right. We’ll soon—”

Her words ended in a scream as the storm-weakened overhang gave way and she plunged into empty space.

M
att heard Jessie’s scream as the lip of the overhang broke loose. By the time the massive chunk of earth hit the slope and shattered into pieces, he was already moving, Shouting her name as he galloped his mount wildly up the hill.

“Jessie!” He hadn’t seen her fall. Maybe she’d had time to leap to safety as the ledge cracked. He could only pray she hadn’t come down with the debris. Nobody could survive such a drop.

“Jessie! Where are you?” He sprang off his horse and clambered up the scree. Fresh boulders and dirt were scattered all around him but he saw no sign of her body.

A sick, cold fear rose in him as he scanned the devastation. Lord, he shouldn’t have chased her like this. He should have just let her go. If anything had happened to her, the blame would haunt him to his dying day.

Matt had never been a religious man, but as his eyes searched the broken ledge a hundred feet above him, he prayed.
Please let her be there. Please help me find her. Don’t let me lose her before…

Before what? The question stunned him. What would his future be like if Jessie were gone? He would never hold her again, never kiss her, never battle against her maddeningly strong will. He would never know what she could mean to him.

“Jessie!” He shouted her name at the top of his lungs and heard the echo bouncing off the ledges. Then he heard something else—a terrified whimper that came from somewhere overhead.

His frantic eyes found her at last. She was, perhaps, fifteen feet below the top of the ledge, clinging to a tree root that had been exposed by the breaking overhang. Her hands gripped the twisted surface. Her feet fumbled against the broken cliff face for a purchase that wasn’t there.

“Hold on!” He flung himself down the slope and vaulted into the saddle. “I’m coming!”

Still praying, Matt raced the gelding up the narrow deer trail. There was no way to break her fall from below. He would have to get above her and lower the fifty-foot rope he kept coiled on his saddle. If only she could last that long.

He gained the top of the cliff and found the place where the raw earth had broken loose. Enough of the
overhang remained to hide her from view. “Jessie, can you hear me?” he shouted, flinging himself out of the saddle.

There was a long, terrible moment of silence. Then her strained answer floated up from below. “Yes…I hear you…can’t hold on much longer…”

“I’ve got a rope.” His hands worked as he spoke. “I’m going to lower it down to you. Grab it, you hear?”

Again that awful, heart-stopping silence before her answer. “Yes…hurry!”

He took a precious second to knot the rope’s end, making it easier to grip. Then, anchoring a coil around his waist, he tossed the rope over the side of the shattered cliff and waited for the pull of her weight. The rope remained slack.

“What’s wrong? Can’t you reach it?” His voice rasped with worry.

Silence again. Then a gasp. “No. It’s hanging off the ledge—too far out to reach.”

Matt stifled a groan. As she fell and grabbed the tree root, her momentum must have swung her beneath what was left of the overhang. There was only one thing he could do.

“I’m coming down,” he said.

Pulling up the rope, he kept one end knotted around his waist and tied the other around a sturdy aspen trunk that grew on solid ground a dozen steps back from the edge. A doubled rope would hold their
weight more safely but, with the added distance to the aspen, it wouldn’t be long enough to reach her. A single length would have to hold them both. The rope was well used and no thicker than his little finger. He could only hope the twisted hemp would be strong enough to preserve Jessie’s life as well as his.

Matt gripped the upper part of the rope so that it would play through his hands as he climbed down. Then, flattening onto his belly to distribute his weight, he crawled to the drop-off and lowered himself carefully over the edge. At all costs, he had to avoid causing the fragile overhang that remained to crumble into the canyon, taking Jessie with it.

Scarcely daring to breathe, he inched his way downward. The prickly hemp burned his palms as he slid down the rope, but Matt scarcely felt it. His only thought was for Jessie’s safety.

“I see your boots!” she called to him. “Keep coming!”

Matt moved downward as fast as he dared. A few inches, then a few more. Now he could see her hanging from the tree root by her bleeding hands. Beneath the dirt that smeared her skin, her face was chalky white.

“I’m going to swing toward you,” he said, inching down to her level. “When I say ‘now,’ let go and grab me.”

Terror flashed in Jessie’s eyes. Her lips moved, but no words came out.

“You’ll have to trust me, Jessie. Can you do that?”

Pressing her lips together, she nodded. It occurred to Matt that he was asking a lot of her, to trust the man who’d let her brother die. But then, what choice did she have?

Mindful of the crumbling ledge, he shifted his body, twisting the rope and sending it into an easy swing. The first pass wasn’t close enough, and he swung outward again. The second pass had more power. “Now!” he shouted as he closed in on her.

In a surge of blind faith, Jessie leaped into space. His free arm caught her waist, jerking her toward him. For a breathless instant her hands clawed at his shirt, then locked around his neck. He had her.

For a moment they dangled in space with the canyon yawning below. Jessie was small and light, but her weight, combined with his, was straining the rope to its limits. If they tried to climb up together, there was a real danger that it might snap. “Can you climb up by yourself?” he asked her.

Trembling against him, she nodded. “My father used to call me his little monkey because I could climb anything.”

“Then listen. As soon as you’re above me, I’m going to swing in and catch your tree root. It’ll take my weight off the rope until you get to the top.”

“All right. Here I go.” She seized the rope and began to climb. Matt boosted her upward until she was free of him. He could tell she was hurting. She was favoring her left shoulder, and he could see where her scraped hands left traces of blood on the rope, but Jessie neither hesitated nor complained. She was magnificent, he thought.

“Hold on. Here goes!” he called up to her. With the gentlest possible swing he caught the tree root. Releasing his other hand from the rope, which was still knotted around his waist, he hung with his full weight on the twisted root. He could feel the pull in his hands, arms and shoulders. It was a wonder that Jessie had managed to hold on so long.

He couldn’t see her now, but the twitching rope told him she was still climbing. The distance was not far, but he knew that every inch would be an ordeal for her.

“Are you all right?” he shouted up to her.

“Yes.” Her voice was thin and frightened. “But the ledge—”

A shower of dirt and rocks interrupted her words. Matt’s stomach clenched as he realized what she was trying to tell him. The rest of the overhang was starting to crumble away.

“Climb!” he shouted. “Get out of there! Hurry!”

He was waiting to hear she’d made it when the tree root broke loose. Caught off guard, Matt plunged
downward a dozen feet before being stopped by the violent jerk of the rope around his waist. For the space of a breath he hung freely, swinging in midair. Then he managed to bend his body, clasp the rope with his hands and pull himself upright.

He could see Jessie now. She was only six or seven feet below the top of the ledge, but she was clearly losing strength. The effort of pulling up was exhausting her. She was moving by mere inches, and now the rope was bearing his full weight as well as hers.

Twisting, she looked down at him. Her eyes were huge and fearful in her small face. “Matt—are you all right?” She spoke with effort.

“Damn it, stop looking and keep climbing!” he rasped. “This rope wasn’t made to hold both of us! If you fall, I fall, and I’m not ready to cash in because some lily-livered female didn’t have the guts to keep going!”

“Oh, you—” With a grunt of fury, she redoubled her efforts. Matt had calculated that a burst of anger would help get her to the top. His stinging words had hit home.

But there was one more thing he needed to do, and he couldn’t let her see it.

Fumbling for the scabbard that hung at his belt, he pulled out a sharp-bladed hunting knife. If the rope weakened and snapped before Jessie reached the top of the cliff, they would both plummet to their
deaths. But if he sensed that the strain on the worn hemp was becoming too much he could slice the rope, remove his weight and give her a chance to save herself.

With no family to care for, he had lived his entire twenty-eight years for his own satisfaction—his pride, his profession, his self-serving pleasure. If his death meant that the passionate flame of Jessie’s spirit would continue to burn, he would know that his life hadn’t been wasted.

“Can you see the rest of the rope?” he called up to her.

“Almost.” She grunted with effort, her tone letting him know that she was still angry.

“Don’t stand up till you’re on solid ground,” he warned. “That ledge could give way under your weight.”

“I know! Stop lecturing me!” she snapped, twisting her head to glare down at him. The setting sun glinted on the knife blade and he knew from the way her expression froze that she’d seen it and realized what he was prepared to do.

“No, Matt!” she cried. “For the love of heaven,
no!
”

“Climb, damn it!” he snarled up at her. “Just climb!”

Sobbing with effort and emotion, Jessie flung her last ounce of strength into getting to the top of the
cliff. She could see over the crumbling edge now. The pressure on the rope was causing it to cut into the surface, sending showers of rocks and dirt over Matt where he hung below her, knife in hand, ready to cut the rope and die for her sake.

She would die with him, Jessie vowed, before she would let that happen.

She had to get off the rope as soon as possible. But the fragile overhang posed an equal danger. Haste, or plain bad luck, could trigger a landslide right down onto Matt’s head.

Jessie pulled herself up six more agonizing inches. Now, at last, her head was high enough to see along the full length of the rope to where it was tied around the aspen tree. By now her hands were shredded raw from gripping the rough hemp. Her full weight was still on the rope, but she dared not let go until she could feel solid ground under her feet. For that, she would need to cross the crumbling overhang.

She anxiously scanned the length of the rope, checking for possible weak spots. Her heart froze as she spotted one. It was about halfway between the cliff and the tree, and it was bad. A frayed section as wide as her fist was showing fuzzy ends of broken hemp fibers. How much time would pass before it unraveled and snapped? Minutes? Seconds?

“The rope!” Matt shouted up to her. “Can you see it? Is it holding?”

She thought of his hand gripping the knife, waiting to cut his weight free. “Yes!” she called back. “It’s holding fine. Go ahead and start climbing. I’ll be up in no time!”

Did he hear the way her voice shook? Did he sense the terror in her lie? Jessie had no time to wonder. She needed to get her weight off the rope before it snapped and sent them both plunging to their deaths.

Hanging on and dragging herself over the top could either break the rope, crumble the overhang or both. There had to be something else she could do.

She frantically searched the cliff and saw a small aspen growing outward from the side, a few feet away. The ground that supported it looked unbroken, but would the thin tree hold her weight? Could she jump far enough to catch it? There was no time to weigh her options. If she didn’t make her move now, Matt would die.

Tensing her body, she let go of the rope and flung herself toward the sapling. For an instant she seemed to hang in space. Then her hands caught the base of the thin trunk. Dizzy with fear and relief, she hung there.

“What the hell—?” Matt’s voice bellowed up from below.

“Climb!” she screamed. “Hurry! The rope—”

Matt’s knife dropped from his hand as he wrenched his body upward. If he didn’t make it, she would be lost as well, Jessie realized. There was no
way up from where she hung, and neither the tree’s thin trunk nor her arms would hold her for long.

In agony, she watched him climb.

Dirt and rocks crashed into the canyon as Matt hauled his body even with the crumbling edge. Now he could see the frayed spot in the rope. He could see the fibers snapping one by one under the strain of his weight. Only a few unbroken strands remained.

Jessie had lied to him about the danger, risking her own life to save his. Now she hung over the void, trusting that he would be strong enough to save them both. He couldn’t let her die.

A wordless prayer flashed through his mind as he heaved himself onto the lip of the chasm. He felt the rope part as he rolled, using his momentum to carry him over the crumbling ground. Just short of the tree, he sprang to his feet. He was safe, but the ledge was going down, and he had to get Jessie.

Most of the rope was still tied to his waist. Matt made a rapid circle of the tree to add leverage as he knotted the end and flung it over the cliff. For a sickening moment the worn hemp hung limp. Then relief weakened his knees as it jerked tight.

“Got it!” she shouted. “Pull!”

Bracing his feet against a boulder, Matt hauled her upward, hand over hand. She was featherlight, but the danger of the crumbling edge made every move an
exercise in dread. At last he could see her hands, then her dirt-smeared face. Her violet eyes locked with his in unspoken trust.

Sweat trickled down his body as he dragged her up and over the edge. Even under her scant weight, the surface of the ground was beginning to crack.

“Roll toward me fast,” he said. “Don’t let go, whatever you do.”

Her face flashed white in the shadows as her body turned over and over. He caught her as she reached him, jerking her back into the safety of the trees as another six feet of ledge caved in and went crashing down into the canyon.