Luther’s fingers itched to make a grab for his skinning knife. He wanted to take his chance, but that gun didn’t waver. He’d die and leave Sally defenseless, though none of the McClellen girls could ever be described as really defenseless.
“You need to run. Forget this killing and get away. You killed a cavalry officer and his wife on that trail. People will come hunting you. I’m the first, but I won’t be the last. Killing all of us won’t stop what’s on your trail now. You should quit this country, lose yourself in a city somewhere. That’s your only chance.”
“No one can find me in these woods.”
“I did.”
The gun jabbed again. “You call this you findin’ me? I’d say I found you.”
“Gettin’ the drop on me just means I’m here. I found you. If you take out now, I won’t come after you. I’ll mislead the posse that’s gonna be on your trail, might be on it already. The only thing I want is for you to leave those folks alone in that cave.”
“They won’t be in there for long.” Then the nervous voice rose. “Come out of that cave.” The shout carried a long way in the mountains and echoed back, eerie and evil. “I’ve got your friend out here, and I’ll kill him if you don’t get out here now.”
Luther would have shouted for Sally to stay inside if he didn’t think this man would put a bullet through him on the first word.
The gun eased off Luther’s spine as the man shouted again. “I’ll give you the count of five, then your friend here dies!”
Luther swallowed, bracing himself for a bullet, easing his hands one fraction of an inch closer to his knife with each breath.
“One.”
A rustle in the trees near that cave entrance drew Luther’s attention. The scrub pines up there were mighty thin. Luther saw no way someone could find enough cover to slip out of that cave. And with Luther standing smack in front of this back-shooter, Sally couldn’t get a shot off if she did get a chance.
“Two.”
The voice was a few steps farther back and to Luther’s left. Where had he heard that voice before? He eased his hand closer to his knife. There was a definite shake of a small scrub bush near the cave. Someone was alive up there. Sally. It had to be Sally. If only Luther could keep her alive …
“Three.”
The man Luther had knocked cold stirred, and Luther knew if that man, Fergus, woke up and bought into this game, they were done. Right now the lone man had to split his attention, which gave Luther a fighting chance. The man couldn’t kill all of them, so it stood to reason someone would survive this. Luther vowed it would be Sally before him.
But if Fergus came around and was up to covering his partner’s back, both of them were a lot safer. And Sally’s chances of surviving got a lot slimmer.
“Four.”
“I’m coming out.” A man’s voice sounded steadily.
“No!” Luther shouted.
The outlaw smacked the back of Luther’s head so hard stars burst in his vision and he sank to his knees.
Fighting to remain conscious, Luther didn’t provoke the man again. Instead, with blurred vision, he watched the cave mouth, listened to the man behind him, waited, and inched his hand closer to his knife.
“Step out where I can see you. Hands up.”
A tall, dark-haired man stepped out. This must be Logan, the man who drew the pictures. The man who had found Sally and saved her and hid her until help could come. Luther’d gotten that much and precious little else from Wise Sister. And now here Luther was, and no help at all.
The artist watched the outlaw with more sense than his chosen profession would have indicated he possessed. He carefully stepped away from the boulders protecting the cave, his hands in plain sight.
Seconds ticked by while Luther wished for a back way out of that cave, prayed Sally had found it and was running away right now.
But the man wouldn’t have stepped out if there’d been one. And his Sally wasn’t much of a one to run.
“There were two of you. A woman was ridin’ with you. I want to see her now.”
The outlaw’s voice! If Luther could remember where he’d heard it, maybe he could use that to divert the varmint’s attention.
Sally eased her head up from behind the biggest boulder. It covered her to the neck, but her head was right there, a perfect target, and this man had spent the last weeks of his life trying to kill her.
“It’s you, isn’t it?” The man sounded as if he didn’t believe it. “You’re the cowpoke Fergus gut shot who fell over the cliff. Bested by a woman. But your luck has run pure dry.”
Luther heard the crack of the outlaw’s hammer drawing back and grabbed for his knife, knowing he’d draw that bullet.
Somehow he’d stay alive long enough to save Sally.
Twenty – five
Calm down. Let me sit.” Mandy made her way to the chair as a new labor pain began tightening what felt like her whole body. She dropped quickly into the chair, trying to remain calm for the girls’ sake.
Tom whirled from his pacing and followed her to the chair, his arms still outstretched, the panic on his face almost comical. Almost.
“Now girls, don’t cry.” Crooning to the girls while her belly tightened was about all she could do. Tom was going to have to wait if he wanted her to talk to him. She did look up, meet his eyes, and say, “Sit down, please. You’re scaring the girls.”
She did her best not to look at him again. The girls were both clinging. Angela had crawled up Mandy’s body until she nearly wrapped around Mandy’s head. Little Catherine had her face buried in Mandy’s neck.
Tom stumbled backward without looking where he was going and managed to more or less fall into a chair by the kitchen table.
Angela turned her head so her cheek was pressed to Mandy’s. Tears soaked Mandy’s neck while she patted her girls and murmured comfort. She hoped it comforted poor Tom, too.
She smiled at him. Almost more than she could do over the slowly receding wailing, the slowly growing tightening of her body, and the slowly building fear about what lay ahead of her, alone—yet not alone—miles and miles from help.
Mandy wanted her own mama so bad she almost started in crying and hollering “Mama” along with her girls.
God, protect me. Protect my girls. Protect this baby coming into the world. Protect Tom Linscott from panic.
That quirked a smile on her lips, which she would have guessed was beyond her at this point.
An afterthought shamed her. Because she hadn’t prayed for her husband.
God, protect Sidney.
Cooter’s cold eyes and that streak of icy white hair appeared in her mind, and she imagined Sidney telling the man he was fired.
Sidney’s going to need protection more than all of us.
She rocked, quieting the girls, breathing slowly to conceal her discomfort until the labor pain ended. It had come hard and too fast. With the girls, her water hadn’t broken until long after her pains had started. Things were much different already with this one.
Rising briskly, she said, “Now, Angie and Catherine, I want you to meet this nice man.” Her tone carefully light, she eased Angela to the floor. Angela gave her only token resistance, which boded well if Tom could keep from yelling. Holding the toddler’s hand and carrying the baby, she walked over to Tom, who seemed to have calmed a bit. “Tom, why don’t you sit down on the floor so the girls can get to know you?”
“Why?” Tom blinked those clueless blue eyes at her. The man still hadn’t figured out he was in for an afternoon, evening, and possibly night of child care. He might not have much time to get it in his head.
“Do it!” she snapped. She hadn’t meant to yell, but that’s the way it ended up.
Slipping quickly to the floor, Tom found himself at eye level with Mandy’s two-year-old.
“Angie, this is Tom Linscott.” For propriety’s sake she should introduce him as Mr. Linscott, but Angie probably couldn’t say Linscott anyway. Of course, mayb
e she couldn’t say Tom either. But the odds were a little better.
“Hi.” Angie grabbed the skirt of her little blue calico dress and bounced on her tiptoes, smiling shyly.
Mandy wondered how much longer it would be before the children were all dressed in gray.
Mandy was so proud of Angela. She loved her little girls, and she loved this baby on the way. They were the brightest part of her life.
“Hi, Angie.”
With a sigh of relief she saw Tom playing along.
Thank You, dear Lord God in Heaven.
“Mr. Linscott is a friend of Pa’s who is going to help us this afternoon. He brought us some new horses. Your papa bought them, and Mr. Linscott delivered them today.”
“Sit down in front of Mr. Linscott, Angie. He’ll tell you all about his horses.” Mandy eased Catherine down, too, and the little tyke seemed almost jealous of her sister because she plopped down a bit closer to Tom than Angie.
Mandy walked around the little circle and pulled close the chair Tom had used. She very much doubted she’d be able to get up if she sat on the floor.
Catherine smiled at Tom then shoved a handful of her little dress into her mouth, flashing her diaper while she wiggled her bare toes.
Tom smiled at the two little girls. Then very slowly, using surprising wisdom for a man who didn’t have children, Tom reached out his hands to Catherine, and when she didn’t pull back, he lifted her onto his lap. “Hi, Catherine.”
The baby giggled through her mouthful of calico.
It surprised Mandy. Then she had a thought that wasn’t a bit comfortable. “Do you have children, Tom—uh—Mr. Linscott?” Why had it never occurred to Mandy that Tom was a married man? He was of an age to be such.
“No, I’m a bachelor, but my sister Abby has a baby between Catherine’s and Angela’s ages. A little boy, and he is almost as cute as these two.” He spoke the words to the girls, not her.
Angela scrambled onto her hands and knees and crawled quickly to join her little sister on Tom’s lap. Both girls seemed content there, which was good because Mandy felt another contraction coming on.
“So the horses?” she prompted, hoping Tom and the girls would sit and talk while she dealt with a labor pain far too strong to be happening so early. This baby was going to come fast. But it could never be fast enough that Tom wasn’t going to have his hands very full with some very upset little girls.
Tom looked up and their eyes met. A furrow on his brow said he knew she was hurting.
So much compassion, so much worry, so much admiration that she was quietly suffering, so much gentle understanding that she was trying to keep things calm for the girls.
Mandy got more true respect and kindness from one little wrinkle on Tom Linscott’s forehead than she’d gotten from her husband during their entire marriage.
A devastating thing to admit while she was in the process of having her third child.
“Get back in there!” Logan spoke under his breath when he wanted to scream.
“No. I’m not letting you draw a bullet.”
“So you’ll get shot instead of me? No man would ever agree to that. And I won’t live with knowing you died in my place.”
“Not in your place, Logan.”
Logan watched the man at the bottom of this nasty cliff. The skinny outlaw never took his eyes off of Sally. She was going to die.
Logan knew it. She had to know it, too.
With that watchful villain aiming straight at her head, there was no way to get her gun into action in time. Of course, Logan didn’t have one. Like the idiot he was.
Sally inched her rifle higher behind the stone. Logan could see it but Skinny couldn’t. If the gunman would look away for one split second … If anything, however small, would draw his attention …
Logan knew that had to be either Luther or Buff kneeling, bleeding from the back of his head. Unable to provide a distraction. From this vantage point, Logan could see the other one of Sally’s two friends lying sprawled on his back in the underbrush, out of everyone’s sight, but in no position to help. Where was Wise Sister?
Searching the area, he couldn’t see her anywhere, and he knew she was in this to the end.
Logan stood there, useless.
That rifle of Sally’s inched higher. She was doing her best to look calm, not visibly move her shoulders, which the man could see. Logan had seen her handle that thing. One second of distraction and she’d have it leveled and fired. That skinny, twitchy man kept his eyes riveted on her like she was bread at the end of a forty-day fast.
So she was willing to die for him, was she?
Logan couldn’t allow it. Couldn’t live if it happened and he’d done nothing to save her.
When there was a crisis, Sally knew she reacted faster than almost anyone on earth.
Every movement was lightning-quick, but to her it felt like molasses. Her vision became almost painfully acute. Every sound was information she used without conscious thought.
She and Beth and Mandy had talked about this a lot. This calm in the middle of trouble. Mandy got cold, but Sally and Beth never did, and they’d decided long ago that it was the icy edge to Mandy’s nerves that made the difference. So Mandy could outshoot Sally, but precious few other people on earth could.
But this wasn’t a quick draw. That outlaw had his gun aimed and cocked. No one could get a gun into action fast enough to beat the quick pull of a trigger. She needed one second, one split second of distraction. But the outlaw wasn’t budging an inch.
Logan dove straight forward. Straight off the cliff. He flew off the ledge straight toward the nervous-looking man with his gun aimed straight between Sally’s eyes.
He was a perfect target. His move meant sure death. If the fall didn’t kill him, the gunman would.
And she knew why he did it, too. He’d known she needed the man to look away.
Logan was dying to save her. No greater love.
The outlaw’s gun dropped away from Sally and aimed at Logan.
Her rifle came up, cool, smooth, unerring, despite wanting to scream and cry and give Logan a thrashing for what he was doing.
In one instant that didn’t stop her aim or slow her speed, she saw the colonel’s wife dying in a pool of blood. The colonel, shooting, fighting, honorable and good and courageous, battling this coward.
She felt herself falling, falling, falling. Trees slapping at her as she tried to grab hold. She saw Luther bleeding and beaten to his knees. Buff was off to the side, visible from here. Down, maybe dead. Logan soared downward.
From out of nowhere, Luther had a knife in his hand and was spinning.
Sally’s Winchester leveled and aimed straight at the outlaw’s black heart. Her finger tightened on the trigger.
The gunman fired.
An arrow whistled through the air—and slashed deep into the outlaw’s chest, slamming him backward.
Logan slammed onto the ground and skidded along flat on his belly.
Sally never fired a shot. She shoved her rifle behind her, mostly ignored her broken leg, and darted out from behind the rock.
Logan didn’t move.
She saw blood. Too much blood.
The gunman was flat on his back, choking and thrashing and bleeding with an arrow surely pinning him to an afterlife of eternal torment and fire.
Wise Sister rushed out of the woods, tucking her bow over her head and one shoulder as she ran. Buff staggered to his feet and came limping behind her, bleeding through his right pant leg, his gun drawn. Luther stayed on his knees and reached for Logan, who lay still as death.
Sally looked frantically around for a way to get to Logan. It wasn’t going to be easy, but she’d do it. She dropped to sit on the ground, swung her feet over the lip of that trail, rolled over onto her belly, and slid over the edge.
Going over a cliff for the second time in her life. But this time by choice.
Sally clawed her way down that cliff, pain radiating out from her hear
t in waves a thousand times worse than when she’d gone over that cliff before.
Twenty – six
Mandy fought against the scream.
This one, just control this one. Please, please, please.
“Please!” That last please slipped out long and loud. She couldn’t control the cry for help. Her belly felt as if a grizzly had its teeth sunk into her, shaking, tearing her apart.
She clamped her jaw shut, listening for a cry. The girls had to be asleep by now. Poor Tom had a fight on his hands because Mandy had said good night and come to her room to have this baby in private and heard the racket. They’d made it through supper, though Mandy hadn’t cooked it or eaten it. But she’d been there, doing her best to care for the girls as the contractions came closer and closer, harder and harder.
The sun had set, the evening had turned to night, and finally she’d managed to get the girls into their night clothes and into bed. But she hadn’t been able to sit there and sing and read stories. It was simply beyond her physical capabilities. So she’d put them in bed and left the girls to Tom. She’d come to her room and let their crying tear her apart along with her labor pains.
Now here she lay, close to an hour later, the pains coming one on top of the other. Nowhere to go for help, no one to turn to, not even for comfort.
“Mandy, I’m here.”
Realizing she’d had her eyes slammed tight shut, she forced them open. Tom could not be in here.
“I’m right outside the window.”
Frantic to find where this man was during this extremely personal time, she saw that her bedroom window was open but the curtains hung over them. Outside she saw a lantern, deliberately held so that Mandy would know someone was out there.
She could see his silhouette through the gingham curtains, his square jaw and straight nose, his Stetson pulled low on his forehead. She could see nothing more and, to her relief, he could see nothing at all of her in the darkened bedroom.
“You should step away. It’s not right—”
Sophie's Daughters Trilogy Page 54