A Cowboy's Heart. Liz Ireland

for the fate of every one of those beeves. But I’m telling you, Will, Mary Ann is not your problem.”

      He shook his head. “You don’t understand. When Gerald was dying I told him I’d look after his daughter.”

      “Things are different now. Gerald couldn’t know that Mary Ann would one day up and marry Oat and you don’t know that the two of you would be any better off together than Oat and her are,” Paulie pointed out.

      “What do you think I should do—leave her with a toothless old man who obviously makes her unhappy?”

      “How do you know they’re unhappy?”

      “Oat himself said they fought all the time,” he insisted, his jaw set stubbornly.

      “So do all married people. I think if you respected Mary Ann at all, you’d trust her to make her own decisions.”

      Will shot her a keen glance. “You’re Mary Ann’s friend. Has she ever spoken to you about me?”

      Paulie hesitated. “No, she hasn’t.”

      “Not even before she ran off with Oat?”

      Paulie couldn’t help feeling a sharp stab of guilt. “She doesn’t tell me everything, Will,” she admitted, though even that was a pale reflection of the truth. Mary Ann could be thinking about Will twenty-four hours a day, and she wouldn’t know about it.

      He let out a ragged sigh, then looked at her, his brown eyes full of kindness. “I guess it’s good you came along after all. You always did know how to put me in my place, Sprout.”

      She revelled in the pet name almost as much as she resented it. Why couldn’t Will think of her like he did Mary Ann, not just as a kid?

      He shook his head. “I suppose I’m still a little confused over why Mary Ann would marry Oat to begin with.”

      Paulie remained silent. The whole world was confused on that paint.

      He shot her a patient glance. “I guess it’s a little silly to be discussing all this with you,” he said. “I doubt you’ve ever fallen in or out of love.”

      The words rubbed Paulie’s fur the wrong way. Why was Will blind to the fact that she’d been crazy about him for years?

      Probably because he was so stuck on Mary Ann he couldn’t see anything else!

      Or maybe because he just didn’t have the slightest interest in her. That was an annoying—though highly likely—possibility. Paulie knew she could never even be a substitute for Mary Ann. She didn’t know the first thing about batting her eyelashes at a man, or flirting. Heck, the only time she’d ever worn a real grown-up long dress in front of Will, he’d said she looked like she’d been sick.

      Sick! At the mere thought, she felt her dander rising all over again. Never been in love? How could he just assume such a thing?

      “That just shows how smart you are!” she said tartly. “You don’t know the first thing about me, Will!”

      He turned to her, his eyes wide with surprise. “Well, have you?”

      Now that she’d started, she wasn’t going to back down. “If you must know, I have,” she said, tossing her head back defiantly. “Deeply in love.”

      “Who?” he asked.

      She blinked. “Who what?”

      “Who is the object of all this love you claim to have stored up?”

      This wasn’t something she was prepared to confess. Especially not to Will. Especially not when he asked her using that sarcastic tone. “None of your business.”

      He looked at her skeptically. “Is it somebody I know?”

      Clearly he didn’t believe her—a fact that made Paulie spitting mad. Men had so little imagination! Just because she owned a bar and wore men’s clothes, was it impossible to comprehend that she had feelings just like every other woman in the world?

      “I’d say you know him pretty well, Will Brockett,” she said. “In fact, sometimes I think it’s the person you care most about in the world!”

      She tapped her horse’s flanks and wheeled around. Will attempted to stop her. “Paulie, wait—”

      She kept going, though, hesitating only long enough to holler one parting shot over her shoulder. “And for your information, I’ll whistle whenever I want to!”

      Will sat apart, with one eye on the others and the other watching for signs of trouble. Trip and Paulie were splayed out near the glowing warmth of the fire, rattling on as usual. Oat was close to them, sitting up but half-asleep. Occasionally the old fellow would jolt awake again, especially when Trip or Paulie happened to mention something about Night Bird.

      “I wonder if we’ll ever find him,” Paulie said.

      Trip shook his head. He was always more sure of himself when he was on the ground, where there was nowhere to fall to. “I imagine if’n we do, it’ll be down in Mexico. They say that’s where he lives, ’cause the law won’t follow him there.”

      “What about the Mexican law?” Paulie asked. “Mexicans can’t like having a renegade Comanche running loose any more than we do.”

      Trip scratched his head. “They say Night Bird is part Mexican himself—the son of a captive woman from a border town.”

      Oat’s eyes snapped opened and he bolted upright, his hand reaching down for his gun. “Night Bird?”

      Trip chuckled. “We were just talkin’, Oat.”

      “We’ve haven’t seen or heard anything,” Paulie assured him.

      Oat shook his head with such force that the bulbous end of his nose quivered. “When Night Bird comes, you won’t hear him.”

      The three exchanged anxious glances.

      Will decided to put his two cents in. “If that were the case, then we might all just as well go to sleep.” They looked back at him quizzically. “No man is invisible. If Night Bird comes, one of us will see him.”

      “Those three railroad men didn’t see him—they were all three armed and none of them looked like they had even had time to reach for their guns,” Trip said.

      The story of the three men who had been ambushed by Night Bird had been through so many versions that it was hard to know exactly what had happened. Most people seemed to want to believe that Night Bird silently appeared and disposed of his victims as easily as an owl swoops down on a mouse.

      “I wonder what would turn a man so mad that he’d take up thievin’ and murderin’ that way,” Trip said.

      “Having your land stolen out from under you would make you a little bitter, too,” Will told him. He bore little sympathy for Night Bird, but he thought he could understand what could turn a man so wrong.

      “What land did that Indian ever own here?” Trip asked.

      Will nodded toward the horizon. “We fought a war to win this land from the Mexicans, but we just took it from the Indians and expected them to be happy about being nudged up to less desirable parts.”

      “We wouldn’t have nudged anybody if they’d just left us be,” Trip argued.

      “But we were the trespassers, and then we expected them to abide by our laws—not their own.”

      Trip looked disgruntled, but said nothing more.

      “I guess Will’s right,” Paulie said, turning back to the fire. “Maybe we’re lucky there’s only one Night Bird, not thousands.”

      “Thousands!” Oat cried, startled by the very idea.

      Will kept his eyes on Paulie. He was surprised that she would take his side after their scene earlier