Seeing a chip that he’d missed, Elizabeth bent to retrieve it, dropping it, too, into the pit. “What about the smoke?” she reminded him tersely.
“It’ll last only long enough to cook with,” he told her as he removed a scrap of linen and a cartridge from his front pocket. From it, he produced a match and struck it. He put it to the cloth, and for a moment, as he watched it catch, he glanced up at her suddenly, his eyes probing. He didn’t understand how she could look at his sister and not see what she was... and then she could look at him and see only what he didn’t want her to see.
He cursed suddenly as the flame singed his thumb.
“Are you all right? Do you want me to look at that?” she asked him at once.
“No,” he told her. “It’s just fine!” Muttering another expletive under his breath, he pitched the cloth into the kindling, casting Elizabeth a swift glance as he returned the cartridge to his pocket. Damned woman. She was gonna kill him before it was all over!
“What about warmth?” she asked abruptly, watching as Cutter readjusted several pieces of tinder. “Won’t we need the fire tonight?”
“No,” Cutter replied. Lifting his head, he gave her a smile. “We won’t—but it isn’t as though we’re in the middle of winter, Doc. And we’ve got blankets.”
His eyes held promises Elizabeth didn’t quite comprehend. Still, she found herself unsettled by them, yet, at the same time, intrigued. “W-what if it’s not enough?” she worried aloud. “It was cool last night,” she added plaintively.
Cutter’s eyes held her spellbound. Had her skirt been on fire, she doubted she could have broken away.
“We’ve got each other,” Cutter said, his lips curving faintly. “We’ll be warm enough, I reckon.”
There was a sudden wild fluttering in her stomach. “The blankets will keep us warm enough,” she assured him much too quickly. “I-I’m certain they will!”
Cutter grinned at her obvious assumption, and her telltale nervousness, then his expression softened considerably. “Ever eat a puddle jumper?” he asked conversationally.
“A what?”
“Rattler.”
“Ugghhh! Of course not!” Elizabeth actually took a step backward, waving him off, as though afraid he would force her. “And I never plan to,” she declared with certainty.
Cutter grinned suddenly. His smile made Elizabeth’s toes curl in her shoes.
His eyes darted to the burlap sack that lay forgotten a few feet away. “Never say never, Doc,” he advised her solemnly. Elizabeth’s gaze followed, then snapped back suspiciously to Cutter.
Cutter’s grin widened, his teeth flashing white against his swarthy, unshaven complexion. His chuckle was low and rich when it came, bringing back that annoying sparkle to his eyes.
Inexplicably, Elizabeth’s heart turned over at the sight of it.
Chapter Eleven
Never came much sooner than Elizabeth would have liked.
With nothing else available, she was forced to at least taste the despised rattler. And if the truth were known, it might not have been so bad, had she not known what it was.
But she did know.
And it was all she could do to get down just enough to keep her stomach from grumbling. It didn’t help matters much that Cutter seemed to be enjoying her uneasiness so much. Forcing down the last flame-singed chunk, she rose and commenced to unpack her bedroll, knowing they would have no fire to see by once night fell.
Thinking that she would catch the remaining heat from the fire as it died, she settled near it. As she worked, Cutter watched her, his expression preoccupied as he busied his hands with a strip of rawhide and the rattler’s forfeited tail end. After a while, he set his labors aside and pulled out his own bedroll, laying it across the fire from Elizabeth.
No sooner were they situated when the sun presented its parting colors, a glorious display of garnet and indigo.
Unfortunately, unlike the night before, sleep eluded Elizabeth, even hours later. She’d half expected that her eyes would close in time with the setting sun. But it hadn’t been so. Miserably, she could feel every lump beneath her, every stone, every stiff blade of grass. Her body was still sore, though not nearly as much as it had been the night before.
Eventually the fire died almost completely, leaving only a few glowing embers, and after a while, even the gentle night sounds conspired against her: the steady trilling of crickets, the distant hoot of an owl. She thought to hum softly to herself, but was too self-conscious to chance that Cutter would hear her; her song sounded more an ungodly squeak on the night breeze than a soothing lullaby.
And Cutter... She was only too aware of him—in spite of the fact that his form was barely visible through the shadows. She could feel his presence just as surely as though he were lying smack-dab beside her.
He, on the other hand, seemed not to have any difficulty snoozing at all! He lay like stone. In fact, she thought it might have been a good hour since she’d heard a single rustle from his blankets, and the fact that he could sleep so peacefully when she could not made her feel all the more restless. And offended somehow, though why she should be, she didn’t know.
