Laura forced her chin back down. "What business" She heard male voices drifting to them from the street. Drunks. Even if she screamed, she doubted anyone would come help her. Closing her eyes, she swallowed. "Mr. Sheridan, please. Why have you followed me?"

He didn't answer. The prolonged silence finally forced her eyes open. He stood there gazing down at her, his expression unreadable in the shadows. After a long, drawn-out moment, he said, "Damned if I know."

The response so confused her that she could only stare. Before she could gather her thoughts, he asked, "How much?"

For a moment, she thought he was propositioning her. She'd heard smoother deliveries, but never from a more frightening prospect. "For what?"

"How much you willin' to pay for a tracker?"

She couldn't think what to say. A stinging sensation washed over her eyes. "You mean you've decided to help me find my son?"

"No help to it. It's all you can do to stay on your feet. You been ailin' or somethin'? No man in his right mind would take you on a hard ride."

Laura ran her cottony tongue over her lips. "H-How much do you generally charge for tracking?"

"Don't."

"You don't charge?"

"Don't track. Like I said, I run cattle."

"I shall pay any price you name." Her pulse quickened. "You won't mind waiting until we return here to get the money, will you? I mean..." She gestured with her hands. "I can get it, no question of that. But it may take a few days to get it wired from Boston. That's where I'm from, Boston."

"Never would've guessed." He pinned her with those unnerving quicksilver eyes again. "You sayin' you don't got the money now?"

She envisioned him growing angry and walking away. "My father's wealthy, very wealthy, and"

"Hallelujah for him." He shook his head. "If you don't beat all. Come into a saloon, offer a man any amount of money he names, then draw a gun on him to butter the bread. And come to find out, you got a run-down excuse for a horse, a pack mule that's nothin' but hide stretched over bone, and no money."

"My baby's life is at stake. How can money even be a concern?"

"Baby?" he repeated incredulously. "I hope that's the mama in you talkin'. How old is this kid?"

"Three days," she whispered.

"What?"

"Three days," she said more loudly.

"Three days old?" When she made no reply, he said, "Christ!," the sound more hiss than word. "How in hell did you lose a newborn baby, lady? When they're that young, most mamas is joined to them at the hip."

"I didn't lose him. He was stolen."

"And where in hell was you while he was gettin' stole?"

Tears sprang to her eyes. "How dare you insinuate I neglected my baby."

"I ain't insinuatin' nothin' of the sort. It's just" He swiped his mouth with the back of his wrist. At the sudden movement, she flinched, then felt silly when she realized he had no intention of striking her. By the set of his shoulders, she could see his frustration was mounting by the second. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "All right. Let's back up and start over. I didn't spit that out the way I meant. It just took me off guard, him bein' so young. A newborn baby puts a whole new shine on things."

His shadowy form seemed to swim, and she realized she was looking at him through tears. "What difference does it make how old he is?"

"A big one. It ain't like I can throw him a piece of jerky and say he's fed. Jesus, lady, a baby? I figured he was old enough to walk, that he had wandered off from you or somethin', and then got stole. Three days old? With babies fresh out of the oven like that, most mamas is still countin' fingers and toes, not sashayin' off and leavin' 'em. This ain't Boston, you know."

Laura had never wanted to smack someone so badly. "I didn't leave him!"

"You must've. Otherwise, you wouldn't be here. A group of men who'd steal a baby would take one look at that hair of yours and snatch you, too. Hell, an Indian brave would trade twenty of his best horses to get his hands on a woman like you, and, trust me, honey, that's low bid. So don't stand there tellin' me you was there, and that your baby got took and you didn't."

A sob snagged in Laura's throat. She struggled to get her voice. "Our well went dry. I had no choice but to leave Jonathan alone inside the cabin while I dug it deeper. At noon when the sun started to get hot, I went down to the creek to haul up water for the vegetable garden. I fell in the rocks and hit my head. I was unconscious when those men stole my baby, not sashaying off somewhere. How dare you accuse me of such a thing!"

"Where in hell was your husband while all this was goin' on? Did he get stole, too?" He paused for a moment, as if expecting a reply. "He should be the one combin' Denver for a tracker. This is a dangerous town. Especially the saloons. You got any idea what kind of men go in those places?"

Rigid with outrage, Laura cried, "I think I have an inkling."

The insult seemed to bounce right off him. "Answer my question. Where's your husband? After I kick his no-account ass, I'll do my business with him." He shook his head. "Three days out of childbed and diggin' a goddamned well? The son of a bitch oughta be lynched."

"He's dead!"

At the admission, he fell silent. Trembling with hurt and anger, Laura turned toward the horse and pressed her face against its neck. In that moment, all the resentment that had built within her over the last several weeks became focused on him. "Just go away. I don't need or want your miserable help. Just go away."

She heard no footsteps, but given the eerily silent way he moved, that didn't mean much. The quiet stretched into a minute. Then two.

"If this ain't a hell of a mess, I don't know what is."

Barely able to speak, she managed a shaky "Yes, well, it's my mess."

The faint sound of his moccasin scuffing dirt came to her. Then he sighed. "If you was diggin' a well and haulin' water, I reckon it's understandable, you leavin' the kid alone."

Laura made a fist in the horse's mane. At this point she no longer cared what he might do to her. What difference did it make? Her sweet, precious baby. He had only her to rescue him, and she hadn't even left Denver yet. The way it appeared, she might not. "I don't need an ignorant ass who says 'ain't' with every other breath and constantly uses the wrong verb tense to tell me my actions were understandable, thank you."

To her surprise, he didn't take up the gauntlet. "I never meant to It just struck me as curious, that's all, you not bein' there with your baby."

"You made it perfectly clear what you thought. 'This ain't Boston'! I wish it were. At least decent human beings live there. 'Sashaying off'! What did you think? That I was busy powdering my nose when it happened?"

"Now that you explained, it's clear as rain you wasn't." She heard him make an unintelligible sound under his breath. "It ain't often I apologize."

"Don't inconvenience yourself on my account."

"For what it's worth, I'm sorry."

Laura couldn't bring herself to look at him, not with tears streaming down her cheeks. "I'm a good mother."

"I never said you wasn't."

"I may not be good at very much else, but I love my baby and I'm doing the best job I can."

"You bein' here and not in bed where you belong proves that."

In his voice, she heard a note of dismissal. Accepted or not, he had apologized, and now he was ready to move on. Her stung feelings wouldn't let her put it behind her quite that easily. She still itched with the urge to slap him, maybe because his accusation had struck a chord. She wasn't a good mother, not because she didn't try, but because she didn't know how to be.

From the corner of her eye, she saw him move toward her mule. "It's gonna be one hell of a trip, you know. You're in no condition to hare off on a long ride, we won't be able to stop very often, and you'll be eatin' my drag dust most of the time."

She jerked erect, not quite certain she had heard him right. Brushing impatiently at the tears on her cheeks, she said, "You meanare you going to help me, after all?"

"Honey, I left a half-drunk bottle of Mon'gehela sittin' on the bar at the Elephant Corral. I didn't part company with it to stand out here in the dark with you and swap insults."

She thought she glimpsed a flash of white teeth and suspected that he had smiled. He pulled a wad of cloth from one of her packs and stared at it. Before he shoved it back, Laura recognized her spare set of bloomers, which she had brought along to use as rags for her childbirth flux.

Giving her mule a kindly pat, which from his large hand was more of a slap, he turned to regard her. "No two ways around it, you gotta get another horse and pack animal."

"I haven't the funds to buy them."

He circled to the other saddlebag. "This where you put your rations?" He unstrapped leather, jerked up the flap, dived a hand into the bag, and swore. "There ain't enough grub in here to last a day."

"I brought what I could."

"We'll have to get more. Exactly how much money do you got?"

Her mouth felt as dry as dust. "Only three cents."

She heard him give a humorless laugh. "Can I pick 'em? A woman straight out of childbed with a dead husband, a lost baby, and three cents. One of these days, I'm gonna have the good sense to run the other way when I stumble into a mess like this." Pulling the mule along behind him, he strode toward her. "Can you stand on your own if I take that horse?"

"Where?"

"Around front to trade her off."

"I thought I made it clear that"

"I know, Boston. You ain't got the funds."

"Then what" Laura caught herself from falling as he seized the mare's reins and drew the animal into a walk. "Wait a minute. Where are you? What are you doing with my horse?"

"Your rich daddy's gonna wire you money, right? You can settle with me when it comes."

He never missed a step, and she had no choice but to follow him as he led her animals around the side of the livery. The red dog ambled out from the shadows to fall in with them, the deer leg still clamped between its jaws. "Any idea at all who took your kid?"

Feeling oddly separated from reality, Laura related the events of the day and her reasons for suspecting the Mexican, Francisco Gonzales.

As Sheridan drew the animals to a stop in front of the stable doors, he asked, "You think he did it because he's Mex or because he's no-account?"

"Pardon?" She peered at him over the bony back of her mule.

"From what you say, you was out cold down by the crick when it happened. You can't have seen much of nothin', so you're only speculatin'. I can speculate with the best of 'em, so I got no quarrel with that. My question is, do you got any call to suspect the Mex, other than his skin color?"

"Are you implying that I'm prejudiced, Mr. Sheridan?"

"You got another reason for actin' like I got bugs?"

Laura drew up her shoulders. "I am not a prejudiced person, and I have not behaved as though you have bugs! The thought never crossed my mind."

He looked unconvinced.

"Besides," she added quickly, "you're not really" She broke off and searched for a tactful way to put it. "You're, um, not..."

"Cheyenne?" he supplied.

"Exactly."

"Exactly wrong. I was raised by the People, most times I think like one of 'em, and for the most part, I look like one. I scare the snot right out of you, and if you say I don't, you're a liar."

Laura took refuge in silence.

He gazed down the street for a moment, then returned his attention to her. "Back to the Mex. Let me put it another way. Did he do or say somethin' to make you think he'd swipe a baby?"

"His character was questionable, to say the least."

"How'd you make that call?"

"He was filthy."

"Just because a man don't wash don't make him a baby thief."

"He looked at me in a highly improper way."

"You can't hang a man for lookin'."

"He stared."

"At what?"

Laura's face flamed. "At places no decent man would."

He shook his head. "Boston, I know you're broke, so pardon me for makin' note of it. But you've outgrown your clothes some."

She tried to read his shadowed face. "What has that to do with it?"

"You're stressin' your seams in some interesting places."

Shocked momentarily speechless by the observation, Laura couldn't gather her wits to retort before he led her animals inside the stable. She followed more slowly. Within minutes, her tracker had procured her a new mount and mule, charging both to his credit because he didn't have the necessary cash on him. The sum he now owed on her behalf made her feel panicky. What if her father refused, as he had so many other times, to wire her money?

With a speed born of long practice, he transferred her saddlery onto the newly acquired animals. After tightening the belly cinch on the bay gelding, he turned toward her. Before she guessed what he meant to do, he seized her by the waist and lifted her onto the saddle. Though she tried to hide it, she winced. In the livery's dim lantern light, she saw his silver eyes sharpen.

"You sure you can handle ridin'?"

"I'm certain of it." She tried to find a more comfortable position, conscious all the while of his gaze on her. "About the Mexican. I didn't form an impression on looks alone. He made a highly improper suggestion."

"Like what?"

"He..." Laura tugged on her jacket tails and took the proffered reins. "He offered to lend me money and suggested I repay it in an indecent way."