8

"This land wasn’t settled as fast as the flatlands of Texas or the High Plains of Wyoming," Luke said. "Too much of the Four Corners country stands on end. Hard on men, harder on cattle and hell on women. The Indians were no bargain, either. The Navaho were peaceable enough, but roving Ute bands kept things real lively for whites and other Indians. It wasn’t until Black Hawk was finished off after the Civil War that whites came here to stay, and most of them weren’t what you would call fine, upstanding citizens."

Carla smiled over the rim of the coffee mug. "Didn’t the Outlaw Trail run through here?"

"Close enough," admitted Luke. "One of my great-great-greats supposedly was riding through at a hell of a pace, saw the land, liked it and came back as soon as he shook off the folks who were following him."

"Folks? As in posse?"

"Depends on who you talk to. If you talk to the MacKenzie wing of the family, they say Case MacKenzie was just trying to return that gold to its rightful owner. If you talk to other folks, they swear that Case MacKenzie was the one who cleaned out a bank and hit the trail with sixty pounds of gold in his saddlebags, a full-blooded Virginia horse under him and a posse red hot on his trail."

"Who do you believe?"

"Well, I leaned toward the outlaw theory until I showed your brother the MacKenzie gold."

"You still have it?"

"About a handful. Enough that Cash could see right away that it wasn’t placer gold. He went back and checked old newspapers. Seems the bank had been taking deposits from the Hard Luck, Shin Splint and Moss Creek strikes. Placer gold, all of it. Smoothed off by water into nuggets or ground down to dust in granite streambeds. The gold my ancestor carried was sharp, bright, running through quartz like sunlight through springwater. Your brother took one look at it and started hunting for Mad Jack’s mine."

"Cash never told me about that."

"I asked him not to tell anyone, even you. Last thing I need is a bunch of weekend warriors digging holes in my land."

"You’re serious, aren’t you? The gold you have really came from Mad Jack’s mythical mine?"

"The mine might or might not be myth," Luke said dryly. "The gold was real, and so was old Mad Jack Turner."

"What makes Cash think the gold came from your ranch?"

"The gold that was passed down through the family looks a lot like the gold from other mines in the area – same proportion of tin or silver or lead or copper or whatever. And then there’s our family history backing up the assay. Case had a brother who married a girl he’d found running wild in mustang country. She was Mad Jack’s friend. The country she ran in was just south of here. Since Mad Jack went everywhere on foot, it stands to reason that his mine is somewhere nearby. At least, that’s what Cash figured seven years ago. He’s been hunting that mine ever since, every chance he gets."

Luke leaned forward and took the coffee mug from Carla’s fingers. He told himself that he hadn’t meant to brush his hand over hers as he freed the mug, but he didn’t believe it. He also told himself that he couldn’t taste her on the mug’s thick rim, and he didn’t believe that, either. He took a sip, looked at her and smiled a slow, lazy kind of smile.

"You’ve been snitching chocolate chips from the cookie batter, haven’t you?"

Carla made a startled sound, then flushed, realizing that somehow she had left a taste of chocolate on the mug.

"I’m sorry. I’ll get my own cup."

"No," Luke said softly, holding Carla’s chair in place with his boot, making it impossible for her to push away from the table and stand. "I like the taste of… chocolate."

He watched the sudden intake of her bream and the leap of the pulse in her neck. When he looked at her mouth, the pink lips were slightly parted, surprise or invitation or both. Her eyes were wide and her pupils had dilated with sudden sensual awareness.

Luke drank, watching her over the rim, putting his mouth where hers had been and savoring the coffee all the more because of it. When he put the mug back in her fingers, he turned it so that when she lifted the mug to drink, her mouth would touch the same part of the rim his had.

"Drink," Luke said softly, "and I’ll pour some more."

Unable to look away from him, Carla brought the mug to her mouth. When the warm rim brushed her lips it was as though Luke had kissed her. Carla’s fingers trembled suddenly, forcing her to hold the mug with both hands as she sipped. The betraying tremor didn’t escape the tawny eyes that were watching her so intently. When she lowered the mug and licked her lips, she heard the soft, tearing sound of Luke’s quickly drawn breath. He took the mug from her again, poured coffee, sipped and then returned the mug to her.

"Case MacKenzie liked more than the land around here. He found a girl whose daddy hadn’t been fast enough with a gun or lucky enough with a miner’s pick. Marian Turner had inherited water rights to Echo Canyon Creek, Wild Horse Springs and Ten Sentinels Seep, and mineral rights to a lot more country. She also had every outlaw in the whole damned territory camped on her doorstep."

Carla closed her eyes and relaxed slowly as she listened to Luke’s deep voice talk about people who had lived more than a century ago, people to whom the Four Corners country was a landscape both intimately encountered and nearly unknown, a wild place where white history was nonexistent and Indian history was so old that most of it had been long forgotten.

"I’ve seen pictures of Marian," Luke said. "I know why the outlaws were circling around howling at the moon. She was all woman. But she had more than a good body and a pretty face. She had the kind of guts that make a man want to catch moonlight and bring it to her in his cupped hands like water, just to see her smile."

Luke sipped coffee while Carla watched, her breath held, tasting in her mind the coffee that was sliding over his tongue, wishing she could be that close to him just once before she died. Watching her, sensing what she was thinking, Luke handed the mug back to her and continued speaking.

"Marian held on to the land and played outlaws off against one another like a nineteenth-century Queen Elizabeth, letting no man get the upper hand in her life. For two years the outlaws fought for her favors – and made sure that no man got close to her without being killed – and then her worst fears came true. An outlaw who was better with a gun than any of the others rode into her valley. The other outlaws couldn’t take the man head-on and he was too quick and too wary to take by ambush."

"What happened?"

"Marian was lucky. The man was Case Mac-Kenzie."

"The one with the saddlebags full of gold?"

"The same." Luke smiled. "He didn’t plan to get married. He didn’t even plan to fall in love. Yet before long he was writing notes to himself, talking about hair that was the color of dark mountain honey and sunlight all mixed together." Tawny, intent eyes moved over Carla’s hair. "Like your hair. Your eyes are like Marian’s too, clear and direct. And your mouth is like hers. The kind of mouth that makes a man want…"

Luke let his voice die away. He took the mug and sipped again, forcing himself not to say any more. The hint of chocolate left by Carla was sweeter than any kiss he had ever tasted.

"Maybe you’ve got Turner blood in you, sunshine. The more I look at you, the more you remind me of Marian." Luke sighed and rubbed his neck with his right hand, cursing the luck that had him living with a woman he wanted and must not take. "Marian was the woman Case had been looking for in more ways than one. He had been trying to find Mad Jack Turner’s son, to give him his share of his father’s gold. Well, it was too late for Johnny Turner, but not for his daughter, Mariah. The gold was just what she needed to improve the Rocking M’s beef stock, hire honest hands and make the place a real ranch instead of an outlaw roost."