Prickles of apprehension played up and down Tamsin's spine and the leathers felt suddenly damp against her palm. She urged her mare on, but Dancer blocked their way. Skin rippled over his powerful chest, and he pawed the stony ground.

"Go on!" she shouted, bringing her reins down across his rump. He sprang forward, leaping fallen logs and rocks. The mare sped after him with the gelding hot on her heels.

Then a ferocious snarl echoed down the canyon. Twisting in the saddle, Tamsin caught a flash of tawny movement high above her. Heart thudding, she flung the lead line free, letting the roan find his own pace.

It was all she could do to stay in the saddle as the chestnut sailed over a waist-high boulder, slid in the loose gravel, and nearly went down on her knees. Ash's horse scrambled partially up the steep bank to gallop past them, as Fancy regained her balance and raced on with Tamsin clinging to her mane.

The ravine widened to embrace a muddy creek. Dancer splashed through the water and continued on up the gulch. The sides of the gorge grew higher, and trees lined the divide, sometimes closing overhead to block out the fading light.

Tamsin didn't know how far they'd come since she'd seen the mountain lion, but Fancy was visibly tiring and the other two animals were streaked with sweat.

Gradually, Tamsin checked the mare's pace to a trot and then a walk. The other horses matched their gait to hers. "It's all right," Tamsin soothed.

Ahead of her, Shiloh stopped, looked back, and whinnied. Tamsin rose in her stirrups and glanced about nervously.

Then something struck her, tumbling her forcefully out of the saddle. She hit the ground hard. Terror stricken, she opened her mouth to scream, but the fall had knocked the wind out of her. She curled into a ball, clenched her eyes shut. Her last conscious act was to attempt to protect her head from the cougar's attack.

Chapter 7

"Get up!" Ash ordered as he climbed to his feet. "No, don't! Stay where you are." He stifled a groan. He'd landed with his left shoulder taking the shock of his weight, the one he'd dislocated in a fall off a broomtail last autumn.

Tamsin rolled onto her back. She opened her eyes and stared at him in stunned disbelief. "I thought you were a mountain lion."

"Shut up. Don't say a word. And don't you dare move from that spot." He rubbed his aching shoulder and muttered a string of foul curses under his breath. He was thirty-six, too old to be leaping off cliff faces onto a horse and rider. He gritted his teeth and shook the kinks out of his back.

Tamsin's green eyes looked stunned, and her oval face was chalk-white beneath the smears of dirt. From the corner of her mouth, a thin trickle of blood marred her bottom lip.

For long seconds she didn't even breathe; then she drew in a deep, shuddering gasp and her eyes filled with tears. "I… I saw… the cougar," she said. "I thought you were the…"

He gave her a look that would have soured milk. "You would have been better off if a lion did jump you."

"I thought-"

"I told you to be quiet, you conniving witch!" Damn if his knee didn't feel like it was screwed on backward. He forced himself to put all his weight on it.

"I'm sorry, I-"

"Not one swiving word!" He limped away and picked up the end of the rope trailing behind his horse. Shiloh's chest and belly were lathered, and foam dripped from his mouth.

The roan nickered a greeting and flicked his ears as Ash approached and ran a hand appraisingly down the gelding's left front leg. Murmuring to the animal, he fingered a bloody scrape on the horse's shank. A patch of skin was torn away, but the wound wasn't deep.

Ash glanced back at Tamsin and saw she was sitting up. "Get down!" She obeyed and he continued his inspection of Shiloh's injuries. Ash lingered over the task, using the time to master his anger.

He'd never hit a woman, but he wanted to hit Tamsin. Just thinking about slapping the hell out of her took some of the venom out of his seething anger.

Seven hours! He'd spent seven backbreaking hours climbing a rugged mountain in this heat to get here ahead of her. And he'd done it with a splitting headache, carrying all his gear.

He'd guessed she'd double back and take this canyon. If she hadn't, he would have had trouble catching her on foot. But he would have found her eventually, even if he'd had to trail her into the mouth of hell.

The other two horses stood head to head a few yards away. Ash walked over and gave them a quick look. The stallion's flanks were wet, but he wasn't even breathing hard. And the bay had enough spit left in him to snake out his neck and bare his teeth.

Tamsin's chestnut mare appeared as weary as his roan but sound. As far as Ash could see, she didn't have a scratch on her.

"You could have killed me," Tamsin accused.

Ash turned to face her. She was wide-eyed and shaken, but on her feet. Her tears had turned the grime on her cheeks to mud.

"I told you to shut up and stay put!"

"All right. You don't need to shout."

Some of the sass was coming back into her tone, but he wasn't amused. Any sympathy he'd felt toward Tamsin MacGreggor had vanished when she'd nearly cracked his skull with that chunk of wood.

"You'd be wise to pay heed to what I told you," he said. "I get the same reward if I hang you from the nearest tree and take you back head down across a saddle."

She shook her head. "I left you your guns. If you wanted to kill me, you had the chance. You won't shoot me, and I refuse to allow you to bully me."

He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, mentally counting to ten. "Shooting you would be too easy. If I kill you, I want it to be slow and painful. Do you have any idea how far I've walked today?"

She glanced toward the foothills he'd crossed to reach this divide. "I think so."

"Don't think. Don't even speak."

Tamsin sniffed. "You would have done the same thing if I was the bounty hunter and you were the suspect." She took off her hat and tried to mold it back into shape. "I am sorry I hurt you."

She was wrong, he thought, ignoring her apology. If he was on the run, he'd never have left her armed. And maybe not alive. If Tamsin was a murderer, she was damn poor at her job.

"You could have crippled these horses," he accused.

"Are you stupid? Running them in this canyon? With this uneven ground and all these rocks?"

A single tear crept down her muddy cheek. "They bolted on me. The cougar… It must have followed us."

"You're a greenhorn," he scoffed. "You saw a deer or a bighorn sheep and mistook that for a puma. Then you panicked, and rode these horses hell-for-leather."

Tamsin took a limping step toward him. "I know the difference between a mountain lion and a deer."

"Sit down." He pointed to a rotten log. "There. And keep your hands where I can see them."

"I said I was sorry."

"Save it." Ire seethed in his gut. Men-hardened outlaws-didn't give him this much trouble. Any male prisoner who'd knocked him senseless would be spitting teeth out of his arse.

Tamsin could have split his skull like a rotten pumpkin. Maybe that's what she'd intended, and all these pretty words were more lies. Because she was an attractive woman, he'd taken chances he never would have with a man. It had nearly cost him his life.

Tamsin MacGreggor was as dangerous as a cornered rattlesnake.

"You're my prisoner," he said. "From now on, I treat you like one."

"I didn't kill Sam Steele," she argued. "I'm sure the judge did it himself. If you take me back to face his court, I'm guilty before I say a word in my own defense."

"Put your hands behind you." She did as he ordered, and he clamped the cuffs around her wrists. Both palms were filthy and stained with blood. He hardened himself against feeling compassion for the pain she must be in. "There's water about a mile ahead. We'll camp there."