crammed full of Sooners who refused to follow the rules.
To Rafe Hunter a rule was a rule was a rule. Those who broke the rules paid the consequences.
Rafe’s attention shifted southeast when he picked up a familiar scent in the evening breeze. Micah must have recognized the scent, too, for he followed Rafe’s searching gaze.
“There’s more Sooners hunkering down out there,” Micah said quietly.
Rafe scowled. “There’s always more Sooners scuttling around out there. You capture five and there’s another five waiting to take their place. At the rate we’re going we’ll have to build another stockade to house them all.”
“If you want to make another sweep of the area to determine who started the campfire I’ll go with you,” Micah volunteered.
“No, you take the prisoners back to the fort,” Rafe requested. “I’ll reconnoiter the area alone.”
While Micah led the patrol back to the fort Rafe reined his reluctant mount toward the tree-choked creek. Although he was tired and hungry, he was determined to rout out another nest of Sooners. By damned, this unprecedented Land Run was going to be fair for all participants—at least if he had anything to say about it.
Rafe dismounted and left his gelding to graze. Employing the Indian-warfare skills Micah had taught him, Rafe moved silently along the creek, following the faint scent of smoke that had caught his attention earlier. To his surprise he spotted a young boy dressed in homespun clothes. Rafe scanned the shadows, expecting to see a crowd of Sooners migrating toward the small campfire. He frowned curiously, wondering if the boy’s family had sent him into the territory alone to illegally stake a claim.
The smell of brewing coffee and a simmering pot of beans made Rafe’s stomach growl. He had been on patrol all day, wolfing down trail rations for lunch and wearing calluses on his backside. And here was this scrawny kid, tucked discreetly beneath a copse of trees, preparing a tasty meal and lounging by the fire.
It just hit Rafe all wrong. He wasn’t going to wait until daybreak to come swarming down with his army patrol. He was going to arrest this kid and haul him back to the fort tonight. Then he was going to seek out this boy’s parents and chastise them for sending a child out into the wilderness alone.
He wondered if the kid’s family expected a soldier to show leniency and look the other way. It wouldn’t be the first time some scheming adult had tried that tactic. But it wasn’t going to work with Rafe.
This kid was not going to spend the night, nestled up to the heat of the small campfire, Rafe decided. He was going to find himself wedged into the stockade with the other prisoners. That should teach the kid a lesson he wouldn’t soon forget.
Filled with purpose, Rafe circled around the trees to sneak up on the young boy’s blind side. “You’re trespassing, son, and you’re under arrest,” Rafe growled as he emerged from his hiding place.
The kid shrieked in surprise, bounded to his feet and took off through the trees like a cannonball. There was not the usual moment of paralyzed shock, just immediate flight. In addition, the kid was amazingly agile and swift of foot. He zigzagged around the trees like a gazelle.
Scowling at finding himself in a footrace with a kid half his size, Rafe took off at a dead run. “Halt!” he shouted authoritatively.
The boy didn’t break stride, just whizzed through the trees and underbrush and never looked back.
Rafe tackled the kid before he could leap over the narrow creek, scramble up the steep incline and disappear in the thick underbrush. He and the boy landed with a splat, and Rafe hooked his arm around his captive’s waist.
To his amazement the worming bundle of energy smacked him in the nose with an elbow, squirmed sideways and arched his back. Rafe found himself on the losing end of a mud-wrestling contest before he could blink. The kid was so slippery that he very nearly slithered away before Rafe could grab him by the scruff of his tattered jacket and yank him off balance.
With an enraged squawk the boy fell facedown in the creek. Rafe bounded to his feet and hoisted the kid upright before he took on too much water and drowned.
To Rafe’s amazement the waterlogged kid thrust back his leg—and hit Rafe squarely in the crotch. Rafe’s knees buckled beneath him, but he kept a death grip on the squirming kid, determined not to let him escape and have to recapture him again.
“Hold still, damn it!” Rafe growled threateningly, then gave the kid a good shaking. “You—”
Rafe’s voice dried up when the boy’s scruffy cap fell off and dropped into the creek. A waterfall of flaming red hair tumbled to the kid’s shoulders. “You’re a girl!” Rafe croaked in disbelief.
He was still trying to digest that startling discovery when the female in question ducked her head and plowed into his midsection, causing the air in his lungs to rush out in a pained whoosh.
All those lectures—delivered by his grandfather and father—about treating a lady with the utmost respect and consideration flew right out of his head when the woman shoved him back into the creek and tried to use him as a doormat to make her escape.
In all his thirty-three years he had never encountered a female quite like this one. And this one was no lady, Rafe decided as he made a quick grab for her ankle. This was a scrappy, two-legged wildcat who knew how to fight dirty and didn’t mind utilizing every trick in the book to make her getaway.
Scrappy female or not, she was an illegal Sooner and it was his job to evict her from the territory, even at the risk of personal injury—which he had already suffered at her hands. His groin was throbbing like a son of a bitch. His ribs were still tender after she had used her head like a battering ram. Plus, the claw marks she had left on his neck, during their most recent struggle for supremacy, were bleeding onto the collar of his mud-soaked shirt.
“Enough!” he roared as he concentrated all his energy on rolling on top of her and pinning her down in the water.
Rafe’s conscience tried to deliver a scathing lecture when he straddled her bucking hips, clamped his hand over her face and held her head under water until she stopped resisting. But his noble conscience relented when she practically bit a chunk out of his hand.
Muttering, Rafe shifted the heel of his hand to her forehead and held her underwater until all the fight went out of her. When she sagged beneath him, as if she were about to succumb to drowning, he wondered if this was another of the many dirty tricks in her surprising repertoire. And sure enough, she began to struggle again, lashing out with her arms and fists, trying to do enough physical damage to unseat him.
Only when Rafe was reasonably certain that he had held her underwater so long that her lungs were about to burst did he grab a fistful of her hair and pull her into a sitting position beneath him. She exploded to the surface like a spouting whale, cocked her arm and tried to punch him in the nose.
Rafe hurriedly shifted sideways so the intended blow connected with air. He jerked her up beside him while she raked that mop of red hair from her eyes. As she struggled to get her bearings, Rafe fished into the pocket of his soggy jacket for a length of rope to shackle her wrists. Thankfully, he was able to restrain her before she used those deadly claws on him again.
“You are under arrest,” he muttered as he grabbed her elbow and frog-marched her ashore. “What’s your name, woman?”
