Code of the Wolf

He returned his attention to the darkness beyond the fire, but Serenity had the feeling that he was listening intently to every breath she took. Gooseflesh crept up her arms.

“Are you good at what you do, Mr. Constantine?” she asked. “When you’re not being ambushed, I mean?”

“Jacob.”

The suddenness of his reply startled her. She’d deliberately provoked him, but instead of reacting with annoyance or anger, he’d offered her his Christian name.

Once she would have found such informality natural, as it had been among her kinfolk. But she knew she and Constantine could never be friends, let alone intimates. He must know that as well as she did.

And yet to refuse his request would be surrendering to the very fear she rejected. She had no obligation to reciprocate with a similar invitation.

“Jacob,” she said.

He nodded briefly without looking at her. “Yes, Miss Campbell,” he said. “I am good.”

It wasn’t just arrogance on his part. He was confident with good reason. She had seen how supremely competent he was, how at home in his own body, graceful and powerful at the same time. Never a wasted motion, like a wolf in pursuit of its prey.

“How many criminals have you caught?” she asked.

“As a Ranger, or a bounty hunter?”

“Both.”

“Maybe fifty or so.”

It seemed an incredible number, but she didn’t doubt him. “How many did you kill?”

His jaw set. “I don’t kill unless I have no choice.”

“Even when someone tries to kill you?”

“I defend myself like any man.”

“You would have killed Leroy, wouldn’t you?”

He gave her another of those long, flat stares. “If I had to. My aim is to take them in alive.”

“What happens when you deliver a wanted man to the authorities?”

“He’s tried by a judge and jury.”

“Have you ever arrested an innocent man?”

He looked away again. “Not that I know of, ma’am.”

Ma’am. It was a safe word, a respectful word, but suddenly she hated it.

“Serenity,” she said.

Constantine—Jacob—was silent for a time. “It don’t seem right, Miss Campbell.”

“You asked me to call you Jacob.”

“It’s not the same.”

“Because I’m a woman?”

“That’s what you are, Miss Campbell, even if you don’t want to admit it.”

She scrambled to her feet. “Not as far as you’re concerned, Mr. Constantine.”

His mouth twisted in that familiar smile. “Don’t worry. I’ll stick to my side of the bargain.” His smile faded. “Maybe you have good reason to distrust all men and refuse to have any on your place. I just can’t help wondering what that reason is.”

JACOB HADN’T MEANT TO ask such a direct and personal question. He should have discouraged Serenity’s curiosity about him as soon as she started to talk. He’d told himself he didn’t want to know anything more about her, but the longer they were together, the less true that seemed.

He hadn’t lied when he’d said she worked as hard as any two men, and just as well. Her skill wasn’t in question; wherever she’d learned to handle cattle, she’d taken to the lessons like a dog to a bone. And she’d never asked a single favor of him, never expected him to take on dirty work she wouldn’t do herself.

The fact was that she’d been easy to work with, and he’d had more than one assumption about female ranchers proved wrong—which only made his need to understand Serenity that much stronger.

Now she stared at him, her full lower lip caught between her teeth, and he noticed again just how pretty she was. Fresh and clean, like a desert night.

“We have discussed this before,” she said. “Does it really seem so strange to you that women might strike out on their own simply because they have the means and courage to do so?”

Her response was much less defensive than he’d expected, which pleased him for no reason at all. He phrased his answer carefully.

“There are easier ways to strike out on your own than to try running an outfit like this.”

Serenity uncorked her canteen and took a long drink. “We don’t just try, Mr. Constantine. We succeed.”

No easy answers, just as he’d expected. “You were lucky to get a place like this,” he said. “You have a spring here?”

“Coming out of the Organs,” she said. “We also have two good wells.”

“There are some pretty big outfits in the county,” he said. “The owners must envy what you have here.”

“Their envy is no concern of mine,” she said, the ice returning to her voice.

“They never give you trouble?”

“What trouble could they give us?”

“You’ve never been pressured to sell?”

“We are capable of defending ourselves, Jacob. There are plenty of good shots at Avalon. Anyone who comes here looking for trouble will get it.”

“You’ve had no problems with rustlers?”

“None to speak of,” she said.

Only because they’d been lucky, which didn’t make Jacob feel any easier in his mind. Even if the more powerful ranchers in the area didn’t find a way to move them off the land, some gang like Leroy’s was bound to see Avalon as a plump chicken waiting to be plucked, come in force, and then—

He cut off the thought and took another tack. “If you’re having trouble with branding,” he said, “what do you do when you set up a drive?”

“We supply cattle to Fort Selden and Fort Cummings. We manage very well on our own.”

And they must leave the ranch pretty much undefended at such times, which seemed like sure suicide.

Unreasonable anger gathered in Jacob’s chest. “You think you’ve found some kind of freedom here,” he said harshly, “but this peace won’t last forever.”

She sprang to her feet. “You have no stake in our success or failure,” she said, her voice husky with emotion. “You won’t see any of us ever again once you leave.”

Why did that simple fact make him want to argue with her? She was right. But he still hadn’t learned a damned thing about what drove her. He knew generally why these women had come here, but not what made her so wary of men, or why she would risk so much to prove she didn’t need them. She must have had a father, a brother, maybe even a husband. The thought of her having been bound to any man had a strange effect on his heart. It made him forget to be careful.

“You saved my life,” he said. “That gives me some reason to care what happens to you.”

She froze in the act of turning away, her face caught in a rare moment of vulnerability. “You don’t have to worry,” she said. “We know the risks. We live our own way and make our own rules. No one here has to be afraid…”

She didn’t finish the sentence, but Jacob recognized how close she’d come to revealing something important about herself. She must have realized it as well, for she suddenly broke into a brisk walk and strode out into the darkness.

Jacob could still see her. He knew she wasn’t in any danger, and she wasn’t angry or reckless enough to stray far from the fire.

Still more than a little angry himself, he adjusted his saddle under his head, folded his arms and closed his eyes. Four weeks, at most, he reminded himself. Only four…

He dozed for a while, half-awake as he listened for Serenity’s return. Only when he heard her soft footsteps approaching her bedroll did he allow himself to sink into a deeper sleep, though some part of his wolf senses remained alert.

It was those senses that woke him first when the gun went off. He sprang up, shaking the sleep from his mind and body, and listened for the echo of the distant report.

“What is it?” Serenity asked, her voice muffled as she sat up and pushed her blanket aside.

Of course her human ears hadn’t heard it. “A gunshot,” he said.

In a moment she was on her feet beside him, fully alert. “Where?”

“Two, maybe three, miles to the east,” he said.

Which would be somewhere in the cluster of what passed for foothills not far from the house. Serenity didn’t even ask how he’d heard a shot so far away. Her face went pale in the breaking dawn light.

“Bonnie and Zora,” she said. Without another word, she buckled on her gun belt, ran for the horses and swung up onto her gelding’s bare back. She kicked the horse into a hard run, not waiting to see if Jacob would follow.

He cursed under his breath, mounted his own horse and urged it after her. Serenity obviously knew she couldn’t push the gelding at a full gallop for three miles across the desert, but she never let him fall below a trot, and the horse was willing enough.

Jacob’s own mount proved equally willing. Little by little, he pulled into the lead, knowing that Serenity could only guess where the shot had come from.

He knew. Just as his nose and ears told him that Leroy and three of his men were waiting in ambush in one of the deep arroyos cutting east away from the Organ Mountains.

There was no time to warn Serenity. He cut across her path, forcing her horse to turn with his. He aimed for a jumble of high rocks a dozen yards from the arroyo. Once the horses were behind the rocks he jumped down, grabbed Serenity around the waist and pulled her after him.

Her fists pounded his chest in a drumbeat of panic. Her eyes were wild, though she didn’t make a sound. He wrapped his arms around her.

“Be quiet,” he whispered. “There are men in that arroyo just waiting for us to stumble over them.”

Her rigid body went still. “Leroy’s men?”

She read the answer in his eyes. Her shoulders slumped, and she went limp as the tail of a newborn calf. Just as he was about to release her, she jerked free and put a good dozen feet between them.

“Don’t ever do that again,” she said, very softly.

He ignored her warning. “Bonnie was working out here?” he asked.

“With Zora.”

He didn’t know who Zora was, but this wasn’t the time to ask. He was too busy keeping an eye on Serenity, who had pulled her rifle from its scabbard and moved to a point where she could see around the rocks to the lip of the arroyo. “How do you know Leroy is there?” she asked.

He couldn’t very well tell her the truth. “I saw one of them stick his head up,” he said. He didn’t tell her that he smelled blood. He hoped it belonged to one of the gang.

“I have to find Bonnie,” she said. “Zora can take care of herself. But Bonnie—”

Her voice broke. She was sick with worry, and there was little Jacob could do to reassure her. “Miss Maguire struck me as a lady who can take care of herself, too,” he said. “They may have the men pinned in the arroyo.” He adjusted his gun belt. “Let’s just hope your friends don’t shoot at me when I—”

“You don’t have to worry,” she said. Her face was as hard as one of the granite peaks rising above them. “I’m going out there myself.”

“Don’t be stupid,” he said. “They’ll shoot you down as soon as you stick your head out. I know how to get around them. You cover me.”

Before she could protest, he was running around the rocks, crouched low and ready to shoot. He heard Serenity’s feet crunch on the gritty earth behind him. He prayed she was only getting into position to shoot if one of Leroy’s gang spotted him.

They didn’t see him until he was within a few feet of the arroyo, and then only because someone out of his sight nearly got him in the leg. He half fell into the arroyo, twisting like a cat so that he landed on his feet and was firing before his boots touched ground.

There were four horses and three men crowded between the steep walls of the arroyo—Leroy, Hunsaker and Silas—and two bodies sprawled behind them, one male and one female. The man was Stroud, clearly dead, and the woman was Bonnie Maguire. She was lying on her stomach, very still, but breathing.

Leroy was heavily bandaged, but he wasn’t as badly hurt as Jacob had hoped when he’d seen the outlaw shot. Leroy’s eyes blazed with a very personal hatred.

Three guns aimed at Jacob. He got Leroy in the bad shoulder again and watched the man go down before the first bullet grazed his own arm. He twisted out of the path of two more bullets and fired again.

His shot missed, but someone else’s didn’t. Hunsaker fell with a cry. The horses shied and squealed. Hoofbeats pounded at the edge of the arroyo.

Serenity had ignored his warning.

“Go back!” he ordered.

“You’d better give up!” Serenity shouted from her position somewhere above them. “You’re outnumbered!”

Silas looked wildly toward Jacob and aimed his revolver at the female body at his feet. “Tell her if anyone shoots again, I’ll kill this bitch!”

Jacob lowered his gun. “Serenity!” he called. “Can you hear me?”

“I hear you. Are you all right?”

“Yes.” The slight wound on his arm was already healing, and he was too worried to feel much pain. “Don’t shoot, and tell your friend to hold her fire. They’ve got Bonnie.”

Neither Silas nor Leroy heard Serenity’s soft wail, but it tore at Jacob’s heart. He swallowed a growl and faced the two men who remained.

“I warn you,” he said, “if you hurt the woman, you’ll never get out of here alive.”

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