When she’d had her fill, Sally stood and wiped her mouth with her handkerchief. Then using one crutch only, she walked back to the front door.
As she passed him, since her broken leg wasn’t doing anything anyway, she used it to kick Logan in the shin.
“Ouch!” Scowling, he turned to her. “What did you do that for?”
Resisting the urge to give him one more sound kick, she asked, “Are you going to help me watch the front entrance, or do you want to start drawing pictures?”
“I don’t have my sketchbook.”
“You really don’t have a brain in your head, do you?”
A deep furrow appeared between his brows. “I thought you said we were safe here. Why can’t I look at these beautiful stalactites columns for a while?” He turned and pointed to one side of the room to where a column wasn’t fully formed. It looked like a set of fangs, one upper and one lower tooth—each about five feet long. “Look at that one. It’s dripping down from the top and building up from the bottom, but it hasn’t met yet. Isn’t it great?”
Sally spared the corner a look. “You shore ‘nuff described it perfectly.” She deliberately spoke her worst cowboy slang in her deepest Texas accent. Maybe it would remind him of why he shouldn’t be kissing her. More importantly, maybe it would remind her of why she shouldn’t be in love with him. They were from two different worlds. His was a world where you looked at a rock and wanted to draw it. Hers—where you looked at a rock and saw a place to duck behind when lead started flyin’. When you’re dodgin’ bullets, I recommend you pick the fattest one.”
She smirked at him. “And you know what? Choose one that’s solid all the way through. That empty middle part on that one”—she pointed to the giant fangs—“won’t stop a bullet worth nothin’. So solid’s a real good idea. You can hide behind it while I protect us.”
“Those men might shoot at us!” He wasn’t asking a question. It was more like he had at last awakened to the danger. It took him long enough.
Well, good. Finally. He needed to be worrying about saving his worthless hide.
“We have to save these beautiful stalactites.”
Sally’s hands tightened on her Winchester. Oh, she wouldn’t shoot him. That wasn’t called for. But just one good whack with the butt of her gun. Just one to get rid of some tension and maybe knock some sense into his head. And if there was not a butt stroke hard enough to do that, at least he’d be flat on his back, out of the range of rifle fire. “You’re in danger from more than just those coyotes on our trail.”
She didn’t identify herself as the threat. Instead, she whirled around and hobbled to the cave mouth. “Get a drink. There’s water in the back. Just follow the horses. They’re not so stupid they don’t know to get some water in their bellies when they have a chance.”
Sally was just resting the muzzle of her rifle against one of the rocks protecting the cave when Logan grabbed her arm, just below the elbow, and whirled her around.
“Don’t treat me like I’m a fool.” He leaned down until he nearly touched her nose with his, just like he didn’t even see she was furious and heavily armed. “I know there’s trouble. That doesn’t mean I can’t stop for a moment and appreciate something God created with pure beauty in mind. I think you’re the one who’s stupid to be able to see what’s in that cave and go right back to water and bullets. You need to open your eyes and see the beauty around you. What’s the point of living if you don’t?”
Sally jerked against his grip, but he didn’t let go so she rose on her tiptoes—well, one tiptoe; her broken foot wasn’t of much use—to yell right in his face. “You need to open your eyes and see the ugliness around you. What’re the chances of living if you don’t?”
They glared at each other, mad enough to light a fire in the air. She yanked at her arm again and managed to drop her crutch and let her rifle swing down so it was out of the way between them. Logan tugged so her forearm pressed against the solid wall of his chest.
“Let me go,” Sally spoke through clenched teeth.
“You’re not going anywhere.” Logan acted as if his height and weight and strong will were enough to force her to do his bidding.
The moment stretched. Sally’s temper built. A red flush of fury darkened Logan’s neck.
Then something snapped in Sally’s anger and turned it upside down, to a different kind of fire. Sally caught the collar of his shirt with her free hand and dragged him down just as he wrapped an arm around her waist and lifted her off her feet—foot.
Logan’s kiss wiped out every shred of common sense she possessed. He dragged her back into the cave, then turned and pressed her against the wall, turning his head to deepen the kiss. He raised his lips the least whisper of an inch. “Sally, tell me you’ll stay here with me.”
His words were nearly lost because Sally wouldn’t let the kiss go long enough to let him speak a whole sentence. “I have to. I am so in love with you.”
Logan shuddered.
Sally felt that all the way to her heart.
“Yes.” His hands slid to her face, and he pulled away so she could see him. See he meant it when he said, “I love you, too. It’s madness. You’ll end up hating me.”
“No, never.” It was reasonable that she would get tired of a man who spent his time on nonsense, but she knew it would never stop her from loving him. “I can’t hate you ever.” She pulled him back to her and lost herself in his embrace.
Logan suddenly wrenched his head to the side, breaking the kiss. He rested his face against the side of hers and she kissed his cheek, his hair, his ear.
“Stop!” With a groan of almost pain, Logan pulled away from her and turned his back, running both hands deep into his hair.
Sally sagged against the stone, pressed a hand to her swollen lips, and tried to think of something, anything except this man and how strange he was … and how wonderful. She’d completely lost her mind.
She needed to be doing something else. What? What else? Watch the trail, find something to eat in the bag Wise Sister had brought along, study possible hideouts down the hill where someone could get a shot off at them?
“We’re going to be together.” Logan turned to her, his eyes blazing. “I’m not letting you go.”
“Good.” Now more common sense invaded Sally’s muddled brain. Her dearly loved parents, the rest of her family back in Texas. Her big sister in need. Good reasons why she should go. She was staying anyway. “Because you’re not getting rid of me no matter what you do.” She launched herself into his arms again.
He caught her and laughed, his beautiful, searching artist eyes seeking her every thought. Well, let him look. She wasn’t hiding anything from him.
Then he dodged her kiss, grinned, and said, “You need to be a bit more practical, woman. This isn’t the time and place for this.”
Sally smiled, then even laughed. “Name the time and place, Logan.”
“How about we live through this, find Wise Sister and your friends, then go hunt up a preacher in the nearest town and get married?”
“Go to town?” Sally widened her eyes in mock surprise. “Tell the truth, is that so we can get married or so you can buy a new sketchbook?”
Logan didn’t even flinch. Instead he looked her square in the eye. “It is all about marrying you. If you promise to keep kissing me like that, I’ll follow you anywhere.”
“I had the same thought myself.”
Logan leaned down and kissed her again, hard and quick. “Let’s go stand watch to make sure no one sneaks up on us until Wise Sister shows up with your friends.” Logan turned her so they were side by side. He slipped his arms around her waist, over her rifle. He helped her hobble along, and somehow they fit together just perfectly.
They reached the cave opening, more focused on each other than on the danger. They stepped out in the narrow space behind the rocks piled by the cave mouth.
A bullet whizzed between them, hit stone behind, ricocheted, and tore a hole t
hrough Logan’s Stetson.
Sally grabbed at Logan, but he was already grabbing at her, and they dived to the rocky floor.
Gunfire whizzed overhead like murderous bees.
Logan threw himself on top of her to shelter her as the first bullet tore a chunk off one of the stalactites. With a shout of outrage, he said, “They’re going to ruin this cave!”
“Those bullets are going to ricochet off the rock and kill us.” Sally grabbed the front of his shirt in her fist and tried to decide whether to drag him to safety or strangle him.
Twenty – four
Luther heard the gunfire and hit the ground before it made impact.
Silent as a ghost, he slipped into the undergrowth on the downhill side of the trail and advanced toward the shooters. He heard Buff and Wise Sister moving, separating whisper-quiet just ahead of him, using every ounce of caution and every shred of cover they could while still moving fast.
More shots rang out, but there was only the volley aiming up the mountain, no return fire. What if they were too late? What if they’d gotten this close to Sally only to have her shot dead minutes before they could protect her?
Luther moved faster, his jaw clenched to keep from roaring in fury. He was falling behind Buff, though Buff was going straight while Luther was on a downhill slant.
The bullets hit stone and caromed with a sharp whine. Two men. Rifles. Probably farther downhill from Luther. He eased on down the slope using the trees to hold him on that steep side of the mountain. It wasn’t fit for a man to walk on, but Luther’d never met the mountain that could best him.
He saw a flicker of movement above and saw Buff waving to catch his eye. With a few quick hand gestures, he told Luther to keep moving down while Buff covered the higher end of the trail. It was more dangerous up there, but this was no time for Luther to jaw with Buff about a plan.
Luther faded down even lower, keeping silent, gripping sturdy trees that wouldn’t give away his position by shaking their tops when he grabbed ahold.
He got below the shooters without their noticing, based on the fact that they were still unloading their guns on something up the hill. That made Luther feel a bit better. This was wild shooting, meant to get in a lucky hit. They didn’t have a real target.
He hoped.
Grim determination twisted Luther’s lips as he saw the first man just ahead, methodically unloading his gun up the hill to a cave opening about a hundred feet ahead and above them. Those hundred feet would be tough ones to climb, which probably explained why they were doing their dirty work from down here. This had to be one of the men who had waylaid Sally’s party. For a back-shooter, he wasn’t watching behind him a bit good.
The man’s focus was fixed on that cave, firing, reloading, firing again. Luther knew what bullets could do inside a cave. A body could be riddled by the ricochet. A wild shot, bouncing off stone over and over, had more than its share of chances to kill.
Luther didn’t aim his gun. No sense drawing that deadly fire when his first shot could only put down one of these rabid coyotes. Luther had no belly for killing either. He’d do it to save Sally, even to save himself. But he’d never killed a man and, if he could avoid it, he didn’t intend to start now.
He moved fast while he studied the situation. Gunfire from a second outlaw told Luther that man was farther away and a bit higher on the trail.
A heap of stones covered most of the cave opening, but there was enough room to get a well-aimed bullet past them. Sally could already be cut to ribbons. Luther rushed recklessly now, hoping the shooting covered any sound he made, using cover for all he was worth but moving whether it was good enough or not.
He’d nearly reached the closest man when the outlaw whirled and fired into the brush, right where Luther figured Buff to be.
A muted cry of pain told Luther the man had hit what he’d aimed at.
Sally crawled on her belly toward the back of the cave with the front of Logan’s shirt firmly in her grip.
She didn’t have to drag him though. He was cooperating.
Bullets thundered and echoed in the cave. One caromed off the ceiling and struck within inches of her hand. She sped up. In the far back there was one big column, close to the water. There might be room there to hunker down and outwait this barrage of bullets.
Something smacked Logan and knocked him onto his side. Sally glanced at him as she resolutely hauled him back onto his stomach. Blood streaked the side of his face, dripped onto his arm and hers. His eyes were open but dazed. While she moved, Sally tried to see if he’d been shot in the head, but it looked like a graze to her. She hoped.
One of the horses screamed. Whether from fear or pain Sally couldn’t say. They crowded the back of the cave, as many of those weird columns in front of them as they could get. Only the sound of the raging gunfire coming from the front of the cave kept them in place. They looked crazy with fear.
Sally was mindful of their stomping hooves as she headed for the corner they’d chosen.
A blow to her leg felt as if a bullet had found her. It was the broken leg. The pain wasn’t enough to stop her, so she didn’t bother to look back.
A loud crack in the midst of the nightmarish rolling thunder drew Sally’s attention. She dropped flat on her face in time to duck a massive white stone hurtling toward her head. One of Logan’s stalag-things. She was glad he wasn’t thinking right, except that probably meant he’d been shot. But if he was only knocked for a loop, then she was glad. Because he’d have felt terrible about the destruction going on in this unusual and beautiful cave.
She felt terrible herself. But then she was being shot at. Feeling terrible made sense.
She dodged a horse’s hoof, caught Logan by the front of his shirt, and lunged behind a thick white column. It was fat at the base, nearly three feet wide, and there was about two feet of space between it and the farthest back corner of this cave. There was nowhere safer for them to be.
She dragged Logan’s feet behind the stone and sat him up, without much help from him. His eyes blinked owlishly. Blood coated the side of his face, black and ugly in the dim light. Awful to see.
Noticing her cast was busted up from where she’d been shot, she saw no blood pouring out, and the leg worked so she ignored it. Whipping out her kerchief from the pocket of her dirty, bloodstained doeskin dress, she pressed it to Logan’s face.
His hand rose unsteadily to take over holding the kerchief. “Thanks, I’m okay. I think. It hit hard but it didn’t go in. Just a scratch.”
The gunfire stopped. Her ears still echoed with the deafening roar of it. The cave was thick with dust kicked up by the barrage.
Sally waited, gathering her strength. She needed to go to the cave door, see if she could spot their attackers, get her rifle into action. But just two more deep breaths first, if they didn’t choke her.
Logan reached for her rifle. “I’ll go.”
“You can’t go.” She knocked his hand aside. No possible chance that she’d give up her gun. Not to anyone, least of all an artist who meant something all wrong when he talked about a fast draw.
The gunman raised his rifle to aim at Buff again. He rose so quickly his hat fell off and revealed a weird streak of white in his hair.
Luther recognized that and it twisted his gut, but he didn’t have time to deal with it now.
The outlaw’s finger tightened on the trigger, and Luther cracked a single butt stroke, hard enough to put down a bull buffalo, across the varmint’s skull. The gun went off but the bullet went wild.
If this man had killed Buff, Luther wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep himself from coming back and using the other end of his gun.
One more to go. As he thought that, Luther realized the shooting from the other outlaw had stopped.
That same instant a rod of cold steel jabbed hard against Luther’s backbone. “Lower that rifle or I’ll cut you in two.” The voice was shaky and nervous, but that gun held as cold and steady as a Montana mountain peak
.
One wrong move would end this for Luther and then, with Buff down, maybe dead, that left only Wise Sister to protect Sally and get her help if she was hurt.
Luther held his gun with both hands, because of the way he’d used it as a club. Now he lowered it. No chance to take a shot, not with the steady feel of that gun between his shoulders and the nervous edge to that voice.
“Drop it. Toss it away from you.”
The voice did something to Luther, hit a chord, sent a chill down his spine that had nothing to do with the gun. He’d heard it before. But when and where?
With no choice to make, he tossed the gun well away from his body. He had a knife in his boot and another in a scabbard under his shirt. Getting to them would require that this hombre get careless. Wherever this man had crossed Luther’s path, there was left only a whisper of feeling that he was dangerous. This was not a careless man.
“Get your hands up where I can see ’em.” The gun jabbed so hard it would have cut Luther’s back if not for his buckskin coat.
“Who are you, mister?” Luther’s hands raised about level with his neck. He was closer to the knife in his shirt with his hands up. And Luther’d had plenty of experience getting it out fast. “What are you on the hunt for?”
“Shut up.” The gun jabbed hard. “I’m not answerin’ any questions. Fergus kilt your saddle partner in the woods. I saw him go down. Now we’ll get your friends to come out and say howdy.”
Down wasn’t dead, and Luther knew it. He prayed this man was wrong about Buff.
“But why?” Luther hesitated, wanting to slow the man down, start him talking, give Buff a chance to wake up, Wise Sister a chance to get in position with that deadly bow, Sally a chance to get away if she was still able. The cave had been as silent as the tomb from the first. “What’d they do to you?”
“One of ’em made the mistake of livin’. I ain’t gonna leave no witnesses to talk about what we do out here.”
Sally had gone over that cliff. Luther had read that sign. And this man hadn’t been satisfied that she was dead. He’d hunted for her body. When he didn’t find it, he’d stalked her like she was a rabbit and he a hungry coyote.
Sophie's Daughters Trilogy Page 53