This Loving Land - Dorothy Garlock [76]
His lips pressed hers gently, tenderly, and Summer gave a quick, warm answer, returning fleeting kisses. All the qualms she had expected, all the quirks of gnawing guilt she had imagined would torment her, were not there. She had given herself out of wedlock, had sinned in the sight of God, and yet there was a strange sense of rightness being here in his arms, as if here was where she was meant to be. Then contentment prodded her mind along a different path. She laughed teasingly, lightly nibbling the lobe of his ear, touching it with her tongue.
“The night won’t be over for a couple more hours, my sweet love.”
Twelve
The last thing Slater saw as he put his heels to the tall black gelding and rode toward the hills was Summer standing in the yard waving to him. A half-mile from the house, he slowed the horse to a canter, then to a walk.
The cattle had all been moved into the lower pastures along the creek, and there wasn’t too much to do now except guard the herd until roundup and branding time. McLean’s Keep and other ranches in the area, including the Rocking S, made one big drive each fall up the Chisholm Trail, across Indian Territory to the rails in Kansas. Each ranch furnished men according to the size of their herd. Slater had made the trip many times, but he wouldn’t be going this year.
His face gentled when he thought of the reason why he wouldn’t be making the trip. Summer. Her name slipped unnoticed from his lips, and he gave himself up to his favorite pastime—daydreaming about her. Summer, soft and yielding; Summer, lovely and proud across the table; Summer, beautiful and tempting in a faded dress with her arms buried deep in soapsuds. He was ever conscious of her. She could not guess the depth of his feeling for her or how his life had changed and become suddenly precious to him. His pa would have loved her! He wished Sam could know there would be another generation of McLeans at the Keep.
Slater had given himself three days to scout the hills surrounding his land. He had moved his lookouts in to watch the herd and the buildings, posted a guard at the entrance to the valley, and assigned several men, including Jack, to guard the “little place.”
It was late afternoon. He had made a big circle and now pointed Estrella toward the boundary line camp where Sam had been killed. Drawing up at the crest of a low hill, he scanned his back trail. He sat his horse for a moment, studying the terrain before and behind him with a careful eye. There was nothing on the trail, no dust, no movement. It was growing late and the sun was already behind the mountain. The softness of the hill evening was settling over the densely wooded trail, and the air was cooler.
The big horse, restless for home, moved off of his own volition, and Slater let him go. Taking his time, he worked his way around a boulder. A wild turkey gobbled and scurried into the underbrush, then the night was silent, carrying no sound except for Estrella’s hoofs. Slater drew cool air deep into his lungs, air touched with the faint scent of sage; it was as refreshing as a drink of cool spring water.
Suddenly, a distant sound, foreign to the evening, caught his ears; he drew up sharply against the black clump of mesquite, listening, his hand on the butt of his gun.
Each boulder, pine or clump of brush was a spot of darkness. The floor of the hillside was covered with a thick cushion of pine needles and profuse stars blossomed in the clear field of sky overhead. Slater waited patiently. Each rock, each tree, each shrub was studied with particular care, making allowance for the darkness, contours, distances, but there was no further sound. Slowly, his hand came away from the butt of his gun, and the horse walked on.
After several minutes of slow progress, the gelding’s ears began to twitch, then stood straight. At that instant, Slater heard the click of metal, saw the flicker of a darker shadow among the mesquite clumps. He threw himself flat along the horse’s neck just as he was struck a wicked blow