He ignored his pounding heart and summoned up some more speed. When he was close enough behind the blonde, he launched himself in a diving tackle that brought her down and sent both of them rolling in the grass.
The woman cried out in anger as she tried to get away from Palmer. He grabbed her and threw himself on top of her. The belt had come loose from her wrists. She flailed punches at him until he managed to grab her wrists and pin her arms to the ground. With him lying on top of her, she bucked and heaved but couldn’t throw him off.
“Damn it, stop fighting!” he told her. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You son of a bitch! Let go of me! Oh!”
Palmer was well aware that he was lying on top of some nicely curved female flesh. He couldn’t help but respond to that.
She must have felt his response, because she started struggling even harder. Palmer bore down on her and said, “Blast it, I’m gonna knock you out if you don’t stop fightin’!”
“Try it, you bastard!” she yelled in defiance.
Palmer let go of her left wrist and tried to use his right hand to clout her on the jaw. She was too fast for him, though. Her hand shot up. Her arm blocked his punch, and she reached across to grab his wounded ear and give it a vicious twist. Palmer howled in pain.
He hurt so bad that his grip on her loosened. She twisted away from him and tried to get up so she could run again. She had made it to hands and knees when he lunged after her and snagged her leg. He yanked it out from under her, which sent her plunging face first into the dirt.
Palmer tried not to think about how much his ear hurt or how he could feel the hot, wet trickle of blood down the side of his face. He scrambled on top of her again, and this time since she was face down she couldn’t muster as much of a fight. He got hold of an arm and twisted it behind her, making her cry out.
He put his other hand on the back of her neck and held her down. “I oughta kill you, you little bitch!” he roared.
“Go ahead,” she urged him through clenched teeth. “Go ahead, damn you!”
“Not hardly.” He kept her arm trapped behind her and slid his other arm around her neck, tightening it into a choke hold that cut off her air. After a minute he got his legs underneath him and heaved to his feet, dragging her up with him. He marched her back toward the horses.
When they got there, Palmer threw her on the ground so hard that she rolled over a couple of times. She lay there struggling to catch her breath as she lifted her head and glared up at him.
Palmer’s gun had stayed in its holster despite all the ruckus. He drew the weapon now and pointed it at the blonde.
“Listen to me,” he said. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if I have to. There’s a lot more at stake here than just you.”
“What are you … talking about?” she asked.
“Gold,” he said. “And plenty of it. Does that interest you?”
“Not near as much … as killing you would,” she managed to say with a sneer.
“Yeah, well, that’s not gonna happen, so you might as well forget about it,” he said. “But if you cooperate with me, you might come out ahead on this deal.”
“You’re trying to … buy me off?”
“I’d rather do that than shoot you.” Palmer smiled. “Better gold than lead, right?”
She stared at him for a long moment before saying, “What’s to stop me from telling you I’ll cooperate and then double-crossing you?”
“The fact that you know I’ll kill you if you try something like that. And the fact that your hands are going to be tied most of the time. But I can take it a little easier on you if you promise you won’t try to get away again.”
She appeared to consider what he was saying, then asked, “You’ll stay away from me? You won’t lay a hand on me?”
“Not like that, if that’s the way you want it. You’re pretty good-looking, but to tell you the truth, I’m more interested in that gold than in anything you’ve got.”
She pushed herself up into a sitting position. “You’re a vile son of a bitch.”
“And the more you remember that, the better off we’ll both be,” Palmer said with a chuckle.
She sighed. “All right. I’ll cooperate … for now.”
“Good. You can get up, build a fire, and fix us some coffee and something to eat.” Palmer paused. “I remember you from that bunch of mail-order brides in Skagway, but I don’t recall your name.”
She got up and brushed herself off, saying with obvious reluctance, “It’s Meg.”
“All right, Meg, get to work. You play along with me and you’ll come out of this all right. Maybe better than all right.”
She gave him a narrow-eyed look. “You know Frank’s going to come after you and kill you, don’t you?”
“Frank Morgan?” Palmer smiled and shook his head. “I don’t think so. Morgan’s dead. I shot him myself and saw him go down.”
Meg caught her breath as a stricken look appeared on her face.
“So are the other two who were with you,” Palmer went on. “It’s just you and me now, Meg, and that’s the way it’s gonna be from now on.”
