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Surely that vicious act had not been repeated a second night. Shane had even said that he was going to stand guard through the night. No one could have gotten close to the farm, much less have wreaked such havoc again!
But as Melanie brought her horse and buggy to a stop close to the men, she soon discovered how wrong she was. The air was putrid with the stench of blood. The ground was covered with it!
"What on earth?" she gasped, climbing quickly from the buggy. She made her way through the men and stared down at the ground turned crimson with blood.
Ken, one of the cowhands stepped to her side. "Miss Stanton, we found a decapitated longhorn in the pasture," he said. "Some sonofabitch slaughtered a prize bull and used its blood to scare the hell outta us, and he's damn well succeeded." He gestured with a wave of the hand. "Look at the men. It won't take much more to spook them into leavin'."
He glanced over his shoulder, at the house. "Josh needs to be here, damn it. Shane Brennan's done nothin' but bring us all a peck of bad luck."
He shuddered as he looked back down at the blood. ''This looks like some Indian hocus-pocus to me." He looked slowly over at Melanie. "Wouldn't you say so, ma'am?"
Melanie's thoughts rushed to Chief Gray Falcon. Had he succeeded at eluding Shane in the night? Was he the one responsible for this latest vicious act? She truly didn't know how an Indian's mind worked, what acts of revenge they might use against someone they loathed.
"I don't know, Ken," Melanie said. She looked around her, at the men, then up at the house. "Where's Shane? Has he been told?"
"I don't rightly think that he knows, or he'd be here angrier than a hornet's nest," Ken said. "I reckon he's tuckered out from his long vigil through the night." He cleared his throat nervously. "He warned us all last night that he'd be hangin' around, watchin' for intruders in the night," he remarked, slipping his hands inside his front pockets. "He told us to stay put all night so that we wouldn't be mistook for a prowler and probably be shot because of it. Damn if any of us took one step outside that bunkhouse, Miss Stanton, not to even take a piss in the weeds. I don't rightly trust a man who's been raised by Injuns." His eyes darkened. "Ma'am, I don't see how any of us should be expected to."
Outraged by the man's obvious ignorance and his inability to tell the true, good man from the bad, Melanie stared with silent disgust at Ken, then spun around and headed toward the house. She went in without knocking.
Sighing heavily, hating to have to tell Shane this latest bit of gruesome news, she looked up the steep staircase, then rushed on up to the second floor. Sad for Shane, not able to even guess what his reaction would be to this latest revolting act, Melanie slipped into his room and tiptoed across to the pile of furs.
Standing over him, seeing him lying there so innocently asleep, stretched out on his stomach on his thick pallet of furs, she wasn't sure she could even tell him what had happened. At this moment he was at peace with himself, with the world. Soon she would change everything for himagain!
Settling down on her knees beside him, Melanie's eyes filled with tears. She reached a hand to his sun-bronzed face and touched him gently on the cheek. Asleep, he looked no more than a child, his sculpted handsome face catching the rays of the sun as they crept into the room from the gaping sides of the closed draperies.
Awash with pure adoration for him, Melanie studied Shane. His lips were parted, revealing his white, clean teeth. His eyes were closed, shuttered by thick blond lashes. His golden hair lay about his shoulders, wide and muscled. Her eyes traveled down his broad back, his tapered thighs, and his thin hips.
She could not help herself. She was drawn into lying down beside him, hugging him closely to her. "Oh, Shane," she whispered. "How can I tell you? Who is doing this to you? Who?"
Shane stirred. He raised his lashes and looked slowly to his side, then smiled when he discovered
Melanie looking him squarely in the eye. "I awaken from a dream of you, and you are here," he said, turning on his side to face her. He placed his hands to her waist and drew her against him. "Did you also dream of me? Is that why you have come? To make it real?"
Melanie wove her fingers through his hair and brushed a kiss across his lips. "Darling, we had plans for this morning, or did you forget?" she whispered. "I hadn't expected you would still be in bed."
Shane eased his hands from her waist. Moving to a sitting position, he rubbed his eyes and yawned. "I haven't been in bed that long," he said. "I was outside all night, guarding my cattle."
"You were?" Melanie asked, sitting up beside him. She began running a hand down the smoothness of his bare back. "Shane, exactly when did you come in and go to bed?"
"When dawn began to break along the horizon," he said, looking at her, suddenly aware of something different about her. Why the questions? Turning to her, he grabbed her hands. "Melanie, has something happened?"
Melanie swallowed hard and nodded.
Shane dropped her hands and jumped to his feet. In wide strides he went to the window and jerked the draperies open. He raised an eyebrow inquisitively when he saw the group of men assembled outside the stable.
Then his gaze shifted, and he saw the morning sun shining brightly on the pools of blood spread across the ground. He drew a shocked breath.
Melanie went to his side. "Somehow, after you came in and went to bed, someone did something horribly macabre," she said in a rush of words. "Someone decapitated one of your longhorns and brought its blood and poured it all over the ground close to the stable."
She placed her hands to his cheeks. "Shane, someone did this to frighten your cowhands," she murmured. "It was meant to scare them away so that you will be left alone to run your farm."
She looked from the window and her eyes narrowed in on Ken, recalling his assumptions. She looked slowly back up at Shane. "Ken suspected it was done by an Indian," she said, her voice drawn. "Could Chief Gray Falcon have done this terrible thing?"
Melanie could feel Shane grow tense at her suggestion. She did not know whether it was because he agreed that it could be the chief, or because he did not like anyone to suspect the Indians because he had been raised by Indians. To him it was a delicate subject.
"That is not the work of Gray Falcon," Shane said, looking solemnly down at her. "I was wrong ever to suspect that he could have been responsible for poisoning my longhorns. I know him well enough to know that he values the life of animals too much to kill them senselessly." He turned away from her and stepped into his breeches. "No, Melanie, it was not Gray Falcon. It was someone else whose values are as dim as his morals!"
"If not Chief Gray Falcon, then who?" Melanie grew ashen with a thought. Her own
