Only My Love by Jo Goodman

forceful and Michael's head lolled weakly on the slender stem of her neck. Her laughter died away. The prelude to silence was a hiccup.
    Michael stared wide-eyed and solemnly at her captor, rather surprised at the sound and the fact that it had come from her. She tried to recall if she had had something to drink.
    "I should kill you," Ethan said emotionlessly. He could see her well enough to know that she didn't blink. She was either the bravest woman he had ever met or the most hopelessly naive. Ethan voted for the latter. She didn't think he meant it. "As sure as I know anything, I know you're going to bring me grief. I knew it the minute I saw you on that train. I think I knew it the moment I first laid eyes on you." One hand dropped to his gun and his fingers curled around the handle.
    "What are you two doin' out here?"
    Ethan spun around, gun drawn. Happy McAllister stood some fifteen feet down the trail. "Jesus, Happy, are you trying to get yourself killed? Don't sneak up on me that way."
    "I already got the drop on you, Ethan." Happy slipped his gun back in his holster. "You would have noticed 'cept for your woman there. I'm of a mind to kill her myself for tryin' to hightail it outta here."
    Ethan put his Colt away. Behind him he felt Michael begin to sag. Before she could fall he grabbed her by the waist and pulled her around in front of him to face Happy. "You thought she was leaving?" Ethan asked. He managed to sound surprised that Happy would reach that conclusion.
    "I saw her sneakin' out with my own eyes."
    "Do you hear that, Michael?" Ethan asked, keeping her propped up and steady on her frozen feet. "Happy thought you were leaving and he was going to kill you for it." Perhaps that would shake her out of her stupor. If he hadn't found her before Happy, she would be dead now. "Michael?"
    "I was going to..." she said quietly, "...going to relieve myself."
    There was a bit of her brain that wasn't frozen, Ethan thought, and she had managed to put it to credible use. "You have a problem with my wife tending to a call of nature, Happy?"
    "No problem," Happy said after a moment's thoughtful pause. "But ain't she a tad fer from the camp?"
    "You're welcome to check her trail," Ethan told him. "You'll see for yourself that she was circling back."
    With a distressed sigh, Michael realized Ethan's words were true. She had become disoriented in the dark and, at the time Ethan had called to her, she had actually been making her way back to the camp.
    "Go on back to camp, Happy. Let me take care of my wife myself."
    "Guess that's why you followed her in the first place, is it?"
    "Guess so."
    Happy shrugged, one wiry brow raised skeptically. "If you say so, Stone. Only I don't recollect ever hearin' a man sayin' he'll take care of his missus by killin' her. Or did I mistake your intention when I came walkin' down here?"
    "If you'd ever been married to more than that mule of yours, you'd know that wanting to shake the devil out of your wife is all part and parcel of the arrangement."
    "Shakin' ain't killin'," Happy said, turning on his heel. Still mumbling under his breath and scratching the uneven growth of beard on his chin, he walked away.
    "He's right," Michael whispered. "You were going to kill me."
    Ethan didn't deny it. "I still might."
    Michael tore away from the embrace that was holding her upright and began to retrace her steps back to the camp. Her progress was clumsy, almost drunken, and when she veered off the path considerably, Ethan snapped at her.
    "Where the hell do you think you're going now?"
    "I have to relieve myself."
    "Oh, for God's sake," Ethan muttered. He waited with ill-disguised impatience on the trail as Michael disappeared behind a boulder and beneath the sheltering boughs of some spruce trees. When she didn't return quickly enough to suit him he started after her.
    Upon hearing his approach Michael quickly righted her undergarments and stood. "I'm coming," she called. She noticed her announcement