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scowled. Irritating female.
    He would find out later how she’d become separated from the wagon train. He was sure that when he did, he’d learn she was responsible for her predicament. As his gaze dropped to the pert curve of her breasts and the slight fullness of her hips, outlined by her dusty dark green dress, there was something else he was sure of. Mr. Dodson withthe shot foot had been prowling around Miss Amory’s wagon with mischief on his mind.
    The kind of mischief that had been going on since Eve had plucked that forbidden apple from its branch and offered it to Adam. The kind of mischief that would probably shock this red-haired Eastern woman to the soles of her sensible little black walking shoes.
    Again he was struck by how vulnerable she appeared in her makeshift campsite in the middle of the abandoned fort. He turned again to the six placid oxen munching on the loose hay scattered around them. “I’ll hitch the wagon.”
    “I’ve been responsible for my team since leaving Independence, and I’m fully capable of attending to them now.”
    Miss Amory’s raised voice halted him in his tracks. He turned on his heel and glared at the contrary woman. “Are you turning down my help?”
    “No, but I don’t need a felon ordering me about. While we’re on the subject, there’s something else we need to clear up.”
    Her casual use of the word felon made Logan yearn to shake her. Instead, he swallowed his anger. He didn’t have time to trade insults with Miss Amory, not with warring tribes of Blackfeet and Shoshones on the verge of attacking.
    Later, he promised himself, he would delight in making this overbearing woman take back every insult she’d heaped upon him.
    “Do you want to live or die, Miss Amory?”
    Her slender hand shot to the bodice of her simple dress. “Are—are you threatening me?”
    “Hell no, but we’re in a tough spot and need to move.”
    “So you keep telling me.”
    He closed the eye that wasn’t swollen shut and prayed for patience. “They’re still out there.”
    “I’m aware of that. But surely we have enough time to establish our…er…chain of command, as I believe it’s called.”
    Feeling not one iota of increased patience, Logan opened his eye. He felt downright mean and put-upon. He’d ridden to the fort to deliver Night Wolf’s warning. His reward for leaving the safety of Trinity Falls had been a nasty showdown with Windham, a brutal beating, and being left to die.
    Almost miraculously, he’d been freed. But, evidently, fate still wasn’t done having a laugh at his expense, because his rescuer was the craziest female he’d ever had the misfortune to meet. And something about her well-bred, faintly censorious voice grated on his already savaged nerves.
    His gaze narrowed. A shot of pain radiated from his right eye. “Where are you from, Miss Amory?”
    “I hardly think that’s relevant.”
    “Boston, right?”
    “Not that it matters, but yes, that is my hometown.”
    He flinched. He should have known. Few good things had happened to him in Boston, which was why he’d left. As far as he was concerned, it was the hypocrisy capital of America, a place where men and women cared too much about appearances and not enough about integrity. It was where trust and loyalty fell before expediency and selfish desire.
    “From your dour expression, I gather Boston is not one of your favorite places,” Miss Amory observed.
    Nothing like a bit of understatement. “You might say that.”
    “But where I come from hasn’t really anything to do with our present situation.”
    She was speaking slowly again, as if she thought he were having trouble understanding her. Which he was, of course. But his lack of understanding had nothing to do with how fast or slowly she spoke. It was her confusing habit of talking in circles that made his head throb with more than the pain of the beating he’d survived.
    Logan’s glance flicked to the stockade. He felt nostalgic about