Bride of the Wolf. Susan Krinard

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      In memory of all the great Western movie directors I love:

      Anthony Mann, Delmer Daves, and John Sturges,

      and for the great Western actors:

       Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda, Gregory Peck, Glenn Ford,

      Richard Widmark, William Holden, Clint Eastwood, Audie

      Murphy, Jack Elam, Eli Wallach,

      and Lee Van Cleef.

       Acknowledgment

      Thanks to Susan de Guardiola and Jeri and Mario

      Garcia for their help with the Spanish language.

       Prologue

       Pecos County, Texas, 1881

      JEDEDIAH MCCARRICK WAS DEAD.

      Heath rode carefully around the body sprawled at the bottom of the draw, gentling Apache with a quiet word. The horse was right to be scared. Jed hadn’t been dead more than a few days, and the scent of decay was overwhelming.

      An accident. That was the way it looked, anyhow. Half Jed’s skull was bashed in, and his legs stuck out at strange angles. The rocks were sharp around here, and plentiful.

      But Jed was a damn good rider. You had to be, in the Pecos, so far from civilization. The old man had been on his way home, just as his letter had said. He would have let go the cowboys he’d hired for the drive once it was finished, and he didn’t trust many people. He would have risked riding alone rather than let some stranger get close to his hard-earned money.

      That was his mistake.

      Heath dismounted and scanned the horizon. Jed’s horse was gone, so there was no way to be sure exactly how it had happened. Maybe something had spooked the animal: a rattler, a rabbit, a gust of wind. Heath couldn’t smell anything but the stink of rot, no trace of another human who might have been around when Jed died. Any hoofprints or tracks had been blown away. If some drifter or outlaw had helped Jed to his grave and taken his horse, he was long gone.

      I should have been with him, Heath thought. But Jed hadn’t wanted him along.

      The old man hadn’t acted like the others when he found out, when Heath was stupid enough to forget all the hard lessons he’d learned. Jed wasn’t easily scared. He hadn’t yelled or run away or tried to shoot him. He’d pretended it didn’t matter, that Heath was still like a son to him.

      But Heath had known Jed was lying. He knew what he saw in the old man’s eyes. Jed had understood that Heath would never hurt him, but he was still human. The only reason he’d kept so calm and reasonable was that he needed Heath at the ranch to keep Sean in check. He’d been willing to use Heath’s secret for his own ends—until Sean was no longer a problem and he could run Heath off like the animal he was.

      Heath laughed. It was almost funny that Jed was more worried about his nephew than a man who wasn’t even human. The devil knew why Heath had stayed on. He supposed that three years of friendship, of letting himself trust the man who’d saved his life, had held him at Dog Creek. That and his contempt for Sean. He’d owed Jed, and he had meant to pay off the debt. But Heath had been ready to ride out as soon as Jed returned and could deal with Sean himself. That would have been the end of it.

      He just hadn’t expected this kind of end.

      Apache snorted and tossed his head. “Easy, boy,” Heath murmured, and knelt beside the body. He touched the bloody depression beneath Jed’s thinning hair. The old man had probably died quickly. No sign of knife or gunshot wounds.

      Closing his nostrils against the stench, Heath patted Jed’s waist and pockets. Nothing. If he’d brought the money back with him, he would have carried it in the saddlebags. Everything he’d received for the sale of fifty percent of Dog Creek’s beeves, driven north to Kansas and the rail lines.

      Before he’d left, before Heath had made his big mistake, Jed had expected to make a good profit. Enough to buy better stock, make Dog Creek grow into a concern that could compete with Blackwater on its own terms. No more risky investments that brought Dog Creek to the brink of ruin. No more wild ideas. No more foolish dreams.

      And no more free money for the worthless peacock of a nephew who thought he could bend Jed around his saddle horn like a twist of rope.

      Heath’s lips curled away from his teeth. Sean had been Jed’s one weakness. It had taken the old man a long time to realize Sean didn’t care for anyone but himself. If Jed had lived, he would finally have shown his nephew that he wasn’t going to be led around by the nose anymore.

      But Jed had waited too long. Once everyone found out the old man was dead and Sean got his hands on Dog Creek, he would sell it to the Blackwells. All Jed’s hard years of work gone for nothing.

      The wind shifted, momentarily clearing away the stench and the raw feelings Heath couldn’t seem to kill. He caught a whiff of a new scent. Old leather and horse sweat, not Apache’s. He sucked in a deep breath and followed the smell to the base of the stony hillside that rose up from one side of the draw.

      The saddlebags had been thrown far enough back under the rocky overhang that an ordinary man might never have found them. Heath crouched and dragged them into the light. They were full to bursting. He didn’t have to open the flaps to know what they contained.

      Someone had put the saddlebags here. An outlaw would have taken them just like he would have taken Jed’s horse. Had Jed seen someone he didn’t know, gotten nervous and decided to hide the bags before he died?

      Heath stood up, a knot in his belly. Maybe Jed’s death had still been an