Autumn Lover Read Free Page A

himself.
    Smoothly he slipped the gun back into its holster before Elyssa could even turn toward him.
    “Is something wrong?” she asked.
    “Just getting used to the sights around here.”
    “And the sounds?” she asked dryly.
    Hunter made a sound that could have meant anything.
    “If you have any questions, ask,” Elyssa said. “That rattling you heard was just Leopard bumping against a loose railing. He scented you and your horse.”
    As they walked closer, Leopard whinnied and pranced, eyeing the strange stallion just beyond the fence.
    Hunter’s right hand drifted closer to his six-gun once more. Nothing he had heard about Elyssa Sutton’s stal-lion was reassuring. Hunter had no intention of letting his well-trained, well-bred stallion be chewed up in a fight with an ill-trained rogue stud.
    “Leopard, huh?” Hunter said, disapproval naked in his voice. “Is he the spotted devil everybody over at Camp Halleck is talking about?”
    “That collection of ill-sawn timber and crooked logs can barely be called a camp,” Elyssa said crisply. “But I guess that my stallion might be a topic of idle conversation.”
    “Spotted horses aren’t that rare.”
    “Leopard is. The enlisted men were quite impressed when their commanding officer mounted Leopard.”
    “Rough ride?” Hunter asked, though he knew full well what had happened.
    “The man lived. It was more than the pompous fool deserved. I told the captain that Leopard wasn’t one of the horses we planned to sell to the military.”
    Hunter looked at the stallion without comment.
    “The gentleman ,” Elyssa said with scornful emphasis, “told me he would simply commandeer Leopard and pay in army scrip, and I should get out of the way so that men could do men’s work.”
    The contempt and anger in Elyssa’s voice made Hunter suspect that the captain had gotten a rough ride from more than the spotted horse.
    Elyssa is just like Belinda , Hunter thought. Dead spoiled. No thought for what other people might need, even the army that protects her .
    “Paiutes and Shoshones both are looking for scalps,” Hunter said. “The army needs all the men and horses it can get just to protect the settlers heading west along the Humboldt River.”
    “So the captain said. I think people would be better protected if someone cut off his supply of liquor, and that of his superior officer as well.”
    Hunter looked again at the stallion silhouetted against the night. If the soldiers at Camp Halleck were to be believed, Leopard had not only thrown the captain, the stud had tried to stomp him flatter than a shadow.
    Bugle Boy blew through his nostrils and tugged at the reins, smelling grain in the big barn beyond.
    Hunter tensed. He expected Leopard to take Bugle Boy as a challenge and start throwing himself at the paddock rails.
    Leopard simply stood and breathed audibly, drinking the strange scents. Then he blew out and fixed his attention on Elyssa once more.
    “Heard he’s a killer,” Hunter said.
    “The captain? I doubt it. The fool probably doesn’t know the loud end of a gun from the quiet.”
    “I meant the stud.”
    “Leopard is a lamb with me.”
    Elyssa’s voice was soft and vibrant with affection for the huge stallion.
    The horse whickered and pushed his nose through the poles in the paddock toward Elyssa. She bent and breathed into Leopard’s nostrils. His ears pricked and he whuffled over her cheek and chin, taking in her scent and her breath.
    She laughed softly.
    The sound went through Hunter like lightning through darkness. He couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to be stroked and murmured over so sweetly, to mingle breaths and then bodies until sweetness turned to fire.
    With a silent curse, Hunter forced his attention back to the big spotted stallion.
    Leopard’s mane and tail were black, full, and very long, proclaiming his ancient Spanish bloodlines. His head was elegantly shaped, black, and held proudly.
    High on the stallion’s