any food, or the means to start a fire. How was she going to survive?
The questions made her head ache more. Weariness settled on her like a damp cloak, sucking out the last of her reserves. She sank to her knees and fought against the urge to cry. She would not give in to tears, she told herself. She was strong and tough and she would make it through this.
“Jesse,” she called out, knowing in her heart that he was her only hope. “Jesse, where are you? I’m over here. Jesse?”
Had he given up? Was he even bothering to look for her? Maybe he’d decided she was too much trouble and that he would find another way to get what he wanted. Maybe—
“Stop it!” she said aloud. “You’re trying to scare yourself. Just stop it! Of course he’s looking for me. He needs me to bargain with Lucas. And if nothing else, Jesse isn’t the kind of man who would leave me out here alone.”
An odd opinion to have about her kidnapper, but she believed it and that belief comforted her.
She shifted on her knees, trying to find a less painful position. The ground was chilly and the cold seeped in through her skirt and petticoats. A shiver rippled through her. It was going to get worse, she knew. There were many poor in Chicago and she’d seen what happened to them when they slept outside in the winter. The lucky ones only lost fingers and toes. Those not so lucky died.
Something rustled in the brush to her left. She looked toward the sound. “Jesse?”
There was a soft yipping in reply. An animal!
“Oh, God.” She leapt to her feet and stood with her back to the tree. “Get out of here,” she screamed. “Shoo, run away. Leave me alone!”
The creature rustled again. Haley glanced around and saw a good-sized rock a few feet away. She picked it up and heaved it into the bushes. The animal yipped again, then the rustling stopped.
“It’s gone,” she told herself, as she wrapped her arms around her chest. “It’s gone and I’m fine.”
She was fine. She was going to be fine. What was the alternative?
Slowly, even as it got darker and colder, some of the fear left her. Perhaps it was because she would rather be afraid out here than afraid in the city. To die in the wilderness wasn’t as terrifying as being attacked in the street, or burned alive in a dark, windowless room.
So she huddled by her tree and occasionally called out Jesse’s name. The pain in her head subsided to a manageable throbbing. He would come for her, she told herself again and again. He wouldn’t leave her out here.
But as time passed, she grew less certain. And the realization that she was going to die out here, all alone, made the tears come. She crouched with her back up against the tree, brushing the drops away as they fell. The cold crept up her skirt and made her shiver. Her teeth chattered. She tried to think about being warm, about a blazing fire, but that only made her discomfort worse.
She shouldn’t have run away. She should have stayed put and found another way to—
A gunshot cut through the night. Haley jumped and pressed her hand over her mouth to hold in a scream, not knowing what the sound meant. Had the men who must surely be looking for them found Jesse? Was he dead? Maybe it was Indians, or outlaws or someone frightening and she would be better off staying quietly here by the tree. Maybe she should—
Another sound drifted to her on the chilly breeze of the night. The faint whisper of her name. And then she knew. Jesse had fired his gun to let her know where he was. He was looking for her and couldn’t find her, so he wanted her to find him.
She took off in the direction of the shot and his voice. She screamed for him. “Jesse! Jesse, I’m over here.”
He called back an answer. She raced through the trees and the brush, ignoring the branches that caught at her clothes and scratched her face and hands.
She stumbled over a tree root, fell to her knees, then righted herself and kept running. Her chest ached from lack of air, her legs were heavy, but she pushed on.
“Haley? Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she called back and broke through a few waist-high bushes. Jesse stood in a clearing, the two horses behind him. In the darkness, she couldn’t make out his features, but she recognized the size and strength of him.
“Jesse.”
He turned toward her. “Dammit, Haley, what were you thinking? You could have been killed.”
She recognized his anger as concern and once again she fought the tears. “I’m fine,” she murmured, barely able to form the words.
He strode over to her, put the rifle on the ground and grabbed her forearms. “Are you hurt? What happened?”
Before she could answer, he pulled her roughly against him.
She went willingly because she had no thought to protest. He was warm and she felt so very cold. Strong arms came around her and despite his strength, his embrace quickly gentled. She leaned against him, absorbing his heat. He rubbed her back.
“Running off was damn stupid,” he said. “You could have died.”
“I know.” She buried her face in his shoulder. “But I had to try.”
“Don’t do it again.”
“I won’t.” She could smell the pleasant scent of his body. As she snuggled closer, she tried to remember if she’d ever been this near a man. She didn’t think she had, and felt a pang of loss. It felt nice to be hugged. Especially by Jesse.
“You could have died.”
She raised her head and found him staring at her. In the darkness, she could barely make out his eyes boring into hers. She thought she read concern there, but she wasn’t sure.
His mouth twisted. “We’d better get camp set up and a fire started.” He shifted until his arm was around her, then he led her toward the horses. “Did you fall off the saddle? Are you hurt?”
“No. My horse jumped over a stream and I couldn’t stay on. When I hit the ground, everything went black. I’ve been wandering around for a while, waiting for you to find me.”
He grabbed the coat draped over her saddle and wrapped it around her. “Sit down,” he said, pointing to a fallen tree. “I’ll get the fire started, then we’ll eat.”
As he worked, she huddled inside the sheepskin coat. Gradually the shivers faded. By the time he got the coffee brewing, she was nearly thawed, although her feet felt as if they would be frozen forever.
“Did I get close to town?” she asked as he opened a can of beans. “I know I was heading west. At least I thought I was.”
He dumped the beans onto two tin plates and set them close to the fire. The light illuminated his features and she saw the corner of his mouth turn up in a smile. “You were heading due west, but Whitehorn is a little north of here. If you’d kept in that direction for a while you would have eventually run into an outpost.”
Well, that was something.
