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Tanner McBain was in there somewhere, probably sleeping off the whiskey he’d drunk the night before. Shannon wondered if he was sleeping alone, and she felt a stab of jealousy behind her ribs. She cursed herself for being such a fool and pushed the thought right out of her head.
She was less worried about somebody running off with her horse during the daylight hours, so she tied Stormy to the hitching post out front and walked around to the back of the building. A set of stairs led to a balcony. Shannon climbed them, then made her way down the side of the building, scanning the numbers on the doors with her eyes. Last night, on her way out of the saloon, she’d gotten the number she needed from Rosie.
Shannon stopped in front of the door marked 14. She knocked.
A man’s voice groaned inside. A minute passed. There was a shuffling of feet, the turn of a latch, and the door opened just a crack, enough for a single bleary eye to peer out at her. After a moment, that eye widened with recognition.
“Miss Duffy?”
“Good morning, Mr. Blaylocke,” Shannon said. “I’m sorry to disturb you at such an early hour, but I was hoping you might still be interested in that job I mentioned.”
CHAPTER 9
They were making good time.
It was only midday, and the town of Lamentation had already long since passed out of sight behind them. Now they were deep in the Arizona desert, and the only thing Shannon could see for miles and miles around were the occasional patches of squaw cabbage and the tall saguaro cactuses that stood like dusty green sentinels in the blazing noonday sun. It was hot, and Shannon was sweating hard beneath her clothes, but she was careful not to drink too much water from her canteen. They wouldn’t be reaching the first spring until evening, so it was important to make her water supply last.
Once, a shadow crossed the ground in front of her, and she glanced upward to see a harpy circling high overhead. She wasn’t too worried about it. Harpies were not generally aggressive by nature. They preferred to let the desert do their killing for them. If Shannon had been alone and on foot, it might have been a problem, but she was on horseback, and she was not alone.
She had Gilbert Blaylocke riding along beside her.
The young Texas Ranger had left his fine clothes behind in favor of more rugged riding gear that was better suited to the harsh conditions of the desert. Now he looked every bit the frontiersman, with the exception of his beard, which was still as impeccably groomed as it had been the night before in Rosie’s saloon.
The man could ride though, Shannon had to give him that. He was clearly no stranger to the saddle, and he was well armed too. In addition to a pair of pistols, he also carried a Winchester carbine, which he kept in a scabbard at the side of his saddle. He looked ready to handle any kind of trouble they might run into—and Shannon had a feeling they would run into trouble of some kind or another before the journey was through.
The only problem was that Blaylocke couldn’t seem to shut up. For the first hour or so, he had “entertained” Shannon with various accounts of his deeds in Texas, all of which were obviously embellished.
Then, when he had run out of tall tales, Blaylocke had switched to questioning Shannon about her own affairs. Not wanting to seem cagey, she had done her best to answer his questions without giving away too much about herself in the process.
The man seemed to be particularly interested in her ranching business, questioning her on details such as acreage and how many head of hucattle she owned.
Like most men in the west, Blaylocke had a disgusting habit of speaking about hucow women as if they were inanimate objects, and more than once during their conversation, Shannon was forced to bite her tongue. She didn’t feel like arguing, and as much as she hated to admit it, she was dependent on the man for protection, at least for the next few days.
Besides, experience had taught her the futility of changing people’s minds on the matter.
It was true that hucows were indeed a different species from humans. The first ones had actually been born from normal cows shortly after the Occurrence. Since then, their numbers had multiplied exponentially. These days, the vast population of hucows came from other hucows, who were bred with their male counterparts. Those were called minotaurs due to their resemblance to the bull-headed monsters from Greek mythology. A few hucows were still born to ordinary cows, but such cases were rare and random.
The situation was somewhat similar to that of humans in the region. Most people living west of the Hundredth Meridian were betas, and they were physically indistinguishable from the ordinary humans who lived in the east. Every now and then, however, a beta female would give birth to an omega child, although nobody would actually know they were an omega until they presented at puberty. Eventually, the omega would be claimed by an alpha—or sometimes multiple alphas—and when alphas and omegas mated, they almost always produced more alphas.
Nobody knew why it happened that way. They just knew that’s how things had been ever since the Occurrence.
“Miss Duffy,” Blaylocke said, jolting Shannon out of her thoughts. “Perhaps you should let me take a look at that map.”
“I didn’t bring it with me. It’s all in my head.”
“I beg your pardon, but how can you be sure we’re going the right way?”
“I’m sure.” She pointed into the distance. “See those three big boulders up ahead? That’s our first landmark.”
As they rode toward the boulders, Shannon wondered if she had made the right decision hiring Blaylocke instead of Tanner McBain.
Her body quickly answered that question for her. The mere thought of the alpha’s handsome face, coupled with the motion of the saddle between her thighs, kindled the flames of arousal within Shannon’s core, and she quickly pushed all thought of the alpha from her mind.
She had made the right decision. Blaylocke was capable enough, and between their two horses, they would be able to return to Lamentation with a sufficient amount of firestone. Not enough to pay off her debts completely, but enough to buy her some more time.
After another half an hour of riding, they were there. The tallest of the three boulders stood nearly fifty feet high, and there was some welcome shade around the base. There were also some patches of buffalo grass for the horses to nibble on.
Blaylocke removed a small telescoping spyglass from his pocket and quickly scanned the horizon.
