A different kind of preacher, no denying it.
The shooting came from the direction they’d just ridden. Right where Mandy had seen that herd of all black cattle.
“Rustlers!” A cowhand came riding into sight, leaning low on his horse’s neck. Even from a distance, Mandy could see bright red blood on a scalp wound. “They’re running off the herd. They’ve shot Tex and Lefty.”
All thoughts of getting married obviously fled Tom’s mind as he sprinted for his stallion.
Mark shoved Angela into Mandy’s hands and ran.
The cowhands all followed.
Tom vaulted into the saddle and turned to look straight at—Abby.
That bothered Mandy some. The man should have looked at her.
“Get everyone in the house and make sure Mandy has her Winchester.”
Mandy decided Tom was showing some sense at last.
“Wade, Red, you protect the woman and children. And Red!”
The preacher-man turned to look at Tom’s thundering shout. “What?”
“You finish this wedding.” Tom jabbed a finger straight at Red. “I don’t need to be here to hear the pronouncing.” Tom wheeled his horse and raced toward the rolling gunfire.
Mandy had known she’d married a man of action, but honestly, even she was a little overwhelmed. And a wedding certainly didn’t count if her not-quite-husband wasn’t around to hear it.
“Let’s get inside.” The preacher caught her by the arm.
Abby slapped the rifle into Mandy’s hands.
Mandy slung it over her shoulder, almost conking the preacher in the head, and felt safer than she had ever since she’d been disarmed.
Red ushered Mandy and his wife and all the children to Tom’s house.
Mandy saw that it was almost a stockade. Solid log walls with opening slits just wide enough to use for gun sights. Those inside could shoot out, but it would be mighty hard for those outside to get a bullet in.
Before they’d gone ten steps, Mandy felt a bitter-cold chill rush up her spine that she’d felt only a few times before, and every time it had meant—
“Cooters.” Mandy broke from Red’s grip. “This is staged. Everyone, in the house now.”
Mandy remembered who she was in that moment. She wasn’t the weak-spined critter that had agreed to marry Tom Linscott for the stupid reason that he made her pulse race and she respected and maybe even loved him. And she wasn’t that mysterious witch woman, Lady Gray, with the cursed forest. And she certainly wasn’t the woman who had tried to win Sidney’s respect by twisting herself around to suit him during their marriage.
She was Mandy McClellen, the fastest, surest gun in Mosqueros, Texas. And maybe in the whole West. And if she wasn’t the fastest, she was still almighty fast.
She had six children to protect, two women, a rancher, and a preacher-man. Maybe the rancher, Wade Sawyer, would be some help. Except she saw that Jarrod was in Wade’s arms, and Abby had Catherine. Which left Wade out of the shooting.
Red had his infant in one arm. His wife had the redheaded toddler and was running with her hand holding the little dark-haired girl.
“Let’s go.” Mandy waved a hand at the preacher. “Faster. They’ll be coming from a different direction than the gunfire. That’s a diversion.” A bullet whizzed past Mandy’s head seconds after she spoke.
Angela howled in fear and set the other children off.
Mandy caught Red and shoved Angela into the hand that held his Bible. “Inside! Now!” She rushed the house, whirling to move backward as fast as she could and still bring up the rear.
Her blood took on the feel of the Rockies in January. She aimed and fired, aimed and fired. There was no thought involved. She didn’t look down her gun sight. There was no time. She didn’t need to anyway. She could feel where those bullets were raining from. Two gunmen, both with rifles, high on the hill south of the cabin. She used her own body to shield the preacher and her son and the other little one the preacher had.
Prodding the rest of them ahead of her with her voice, her eyes picked out the puff of smoke curling from the guns firing at her. With deadly accuracy, she unloaded her Winchester, whirled it in the air one-handed to cock it, fired again, cocking and firing faster than the eye could see.
In the way of every fight she’d ever been in, the world slowed. Mandy had time to aim and fire. Time to reload. Time to look side to side and behind her back and over her head. Time to plan her next shot and figure where she might need to aim next.
Glancing back, she saw Abby, with Mandy’s daughter in her arms, look at Mandy’s rifle and understand the skill, the speed, the deadly aim. Mandy read all of that without missing a shot.
Abby turned away and ducked inside as a bullet cut a chunk out of the door inches from her blond head.
Wade had a drawn Colt revolver, but it was useless at this distance. Besides, he was carrying Jarrod. He had to get to shelter, and he did, disappearing inside.
Two of her babies were safe. Mandy snapped shells out of her ammunition belt and reloaded almost as fast as she could fire.
“Go! Get inside!” Mandy saw Red turn back to her, worrying about her, his eyes wide as he noted her speed and accuracy and frigid control. “I’m right behind you. Move!” She had complete awareness of everyone behind her, the outlaws firing on them, where the door was, where her rifle would hit.
She heard a shout of pain from up on the hill, and one of the shooters’ guns fell silent. The dry-gulchers moved, ducking sideways. She followed them with flying lead. They crouched behind a pile of rocks. Both gunmen were firing again. She knew exactly where they were by the sound of their thundering guns and the sheer cold calculation she was capable of.
Gunfire caromed off the ground behind Mandy’s running feet. Red picked up speed, thank the Good Lord. Her rifle exploded steadily. Angela cried only a few steps behind Mandy, but even that didn’t penetrate the cold in her veins.
Red’s wife was in. Then Red, Jarrod, and Red’s own child in his arms were swallowed up by the door and those heavy log walls.
Mandy had five steps to go. Three. A bullet buzzed so close to her ear Mandy felt the heat. And she was inside. The door slammed behind her, and bullets peppered the sturdy slit logs of the door.
The gunfire continued from outside, steady, lethal.
Red set a massive brace across the door.
Abby had a knife in her hand and was watching through one of the rifle sights.
Wade pulled guns down from a rack in the large room, one side half-covered by a stone fireplace. He loaded guns as fast as his hands could move.
“There’s a crawlspace under that rug.” Abby pointed at a bearskin rug in the center of the living room. “Cassie, get the children down there.”
Red’s wife stood her toddler on his feet and scooped both children out of Red’s arms.
Mandy watched all of this while she reloaded her Winchester with hard, quick movements.
With a jerk of a strong arm that didn’t really seem to go with being a preacher, Red opened the trap door, lifting rug and all, and waved Cassie inside, with all six children.
It reminded Mandy sharply of the crawlspace under her home in Texas. She’d been forced to go in there for cover once. It was a good position. Red dropped the door shut, and the rug settled over it so no one would even know it was there.
Mandy could turn her attention to the fight knowing her children were safe. “What’s in the back of the house? Can they come in that way?” Mandy, rifle in hand, moved to peer out the gun portal on the south side of the room. She could tell from the direction of the gunfire that their attackers had moved.
“The shots all came from the front,” Abby shouted over the sound of blasting lead.
“They’re a pack of back-shooters. They’ll come at us from behind if they can.”
The gunfire stopped as suddenly as it had started. The Cooters were cold-blooded and smart. They’d probably hoped to finish this in a single hail of b
ullets. When that failed, they knew to save ammunition.
“I’ll go keep an eye on the back of the house.” Red strode that direction, shouting orders. “Wade, get upstairs and see if you can get an angle on where they’re shooting from.”
“They’re on the south,” Mandy yelled. “But they’re on the move, too.”
“Tom will hear the shots and come running.” Red rushed out.
Wade jerked open a door and vanished up a stairway.
A second later, Red popped his head back in the living room and his steady gaze nearly pinned Mandy to the log wall. “By the way, I now pronounce you man and wife.” He turned those blue eyes on Abby. “You’re the witness.”
Abby nodded.
“That does not count,” Mandy called after him.
The only response was Red slamming the door on his way out.
“It doesn’t!” Mandy glared at Abby.
Who shrugged. “Talk to the preacher, not me.”
Mandy scanned back and forth, high and low. She saw no sign of movement, no outlaw to draw a bead on. Once she decided there was no one to shoot at, she had a chance to think.
That running cowhand had shouted that they’d shot Tex and Lefty. “Death.” It had already begun.
“What?” Abby leaned a rifle against the log wall but kept her knife in hand as if that was her weapon of choice.
“I brought death to your brother.”
The blond woman’s brow furrowed.
Mandy wouldn’t blame Abby if she threw that knife straight at Mandy’s heart. In fact, that might be best for everyone. Surely they’d leave the children alone once she was dead. Surely they’d leave Tom alone if she never married him. Then he wouldn’t risk his life every time he stepped into the open.
For a second Mandy’s stomach roiled and the muscles in her knees wavered until she thought she might drop right to the floor from the thought of Tom, even now, running straight into the teeth of evil guns.
“What do you mean by that?” Abby peered through the narrow slit in the front wall of the cabin then moved to the far side of the room to look out. She was restless, watchful, careful … furious.
Mandy couldn’t help liking her. “The reason I’ve stayed up in those mountains alone … well, alone with my children … is because a family named Cooter has declared a blood feud against my family. My husband’s bodyguards killed a couple of Cooters when they attacked us, and the whole Cooter family came running to take up arms against us.”
“Feud?” Abby shook her head. “Against a woman and children? What sort of cowards are these?”
“The sort that come and come and come.” The sort that could talk family and feuding but would probably leave her alone if there weren’t a fortune in gold. “There seems to be no end. A group of Shoshone lived in the woods around my home and kept them back. The Cooters seemed content to leave me alive as long as I was trapped in my cabin. When Tom came, I told him the Cooters would come with guns blazing. I know that’s what’s going on now. They ran off Tom’s herd as a diversion so they could attack the house and try to kill me. They’ve probably already killed some of Tom’s men. They won’t stop.”
“So why did you come to him, then? Why didn’t you send him away when he asked you to marry him?” Abby looked at her knife. Sunlight, through the slit in the wall, glinted on the blade.
“He didn’t ask.” Mandy deserved to have Tom’s sister hate her. Mandy would hate anyone who brought danger to her family. “He told me we were getting married. When I refused, he kidnapped two of my children. Then he spent the whole ride here teaching them to call him pa.”
Abby stared at Mandy for a long moment. Then a smile quirked her lips. “That sounds like something my stubborn, know-it-all brother would do.” She turned back to keeping watch.
“But I need to go back. I need to leave here and take the trouble with me.”
Abby kept her eyes straight forward, alert, listening but not distracted from her lookout post. “Here’s what I think.”
For some reason, Mandy felt as if this was important, epic even. Abby was a tough woman, and she obviously cared about her brother.
“To stay in hiding to protect your children is a wise thing, if that is your only hope to save them.”
Exactly as Mandy had thought. Her stomach sank. The wise thing to do was to go home. Back through that gap. Back to seclusion. Her throat seemed to swell as if the idea of going back to that bitterly lonely life would choke her to death.
“But that isn’t your only hope.” Abby’s blue eyes blazed like the heart of a flame.
Even from across the room Mandy felt the woman’s strength, and Mandy, who considered herself as strong as any woman alive, wanted to lean on Abby Sawyer.
“My brother is a strong man. My husband is strong, too, in his own way. Strong in kindness and decency. A stronger man in many ways than my brother. My husband is wise, and he recognizes that true strength is inside, in a man’s soul, in a man’s faith in God.”
“Tom isn’t a believer?”
“He is. But even God doesn’t seem to be able to control Tom’s red-hot temper.”
Mandy had seen that temper a time or two. It didn’t bother her. Mandy could handle a cranky man.
“You shame my brother by living away from him, not giving him the respect he deserves to protect his family.”
“We are not his family.” Mandy left her gun sight and moved to the far end of the living room. She saw no movement outside. Not the least whisper of activity that would give her a target.
“You are.” Abby roved between the two sides of the room. “You spoke your vows before God. I’m the witness. But even without the vows, my brother has claimed you in his heart. That isn’t a gift he gives easily. To turn your back on that gift marks you as a weakling and a coward. You give these Cooters the power to decide where you live and with who.”
“A weakling? A coward?” Mandy’s spine stiffened. She was reminded forcefully she had a temper of her own.
“What would you call it?” Abby turned from her vigilant watch to look Mandy in the eye.
From the length of the wide living room, it occurred to Mandy that they looked alike in general ways. Long blond hair, blue eyes. Abby was taller, leaner, burned brown from the heat of the Montana summer. But Mandy bet, even with that gleaming knife, Abby wasn’t tougher. “I’d call it keeping my children alive.”
“I say you’re the rabbit and the coyotes have driven you into a hole. The speed that you had when you leveled that rifle tells me you’re not frightened, defenseless, and cowering. You’re not a rabbit. So why do you let them rule you? Get back out into the world. Face these coyotes. Give my brother the respect of letting him protect his woman and children. If he can’t do it, then you do it yourself.”
“I’ve already—” Mandy’s voice broke. She didn’t know if she could say what she wanted to. The words had never passed her lips. Her heart picked up speed, and her throat tightened, telling her to keep quiet. And yet Abby’s steady eyes and challenging words dragged the words out. “I killed a man, Abby.”
Mandy was sick to admit it. She’d never spoken the words aloud to anyone. But in the early days, shortly before Luther was wounded, she’d been standing watch and a man with that white thatch of hair had jumped her, gun drawn, and Mandy had killed him. He’d been no match for her speed and accuracy. He’d been no match for the cold-blooded way she fought.
“It’s a scar on my soul.” Mandy looked into Abby’s eyes, begging the woman to understand. “No matter how much evil a man does. No matter how much he may deserve to die. No matter the danger to me and my children if I don’t fight back. No matter that I had no choice but to pull that trigger—” Mandy realized in a flash that her true cowardice and weakness was buried behind these words. “It’s a terrible thing to take a human life.”
She never wanted to do such a thing again. Did the fact that she’d killed put her beyond heaven?
“Thou shalt not kill.”
When she thought it all the way through, Mandy knew God could forgive anything. But it shouldn’t happen.
The worst of it was knowing she’d cut off a man’s chance for eternal life if he died, unrepentant, by her hand. Because the man coming after her was evil, she had very likely, with one twitch of her trigger finger, sent a man to eternal fire.
It made her sick to think it might happen again at any time. Today.
“I was safe from this.” Mandy lifted her Winchester. The weapon fit her hand as comfortably as her fingers. “I was safe from having to kill again.”
“I saw the way you shoot. I’ve never seen more accuracy, more speed.”
“I’m too fast.” Mandy looked at her rifle. “I’ve always been greased lightning, fast and cool and deadly. When there’s trouble, I get cold inside, calm, cruel. I’d kill again to protect my children. And I can’t let them kill me and leave my children with no one. I can’t.”
Abby looked down at her knife. “And you don’t want to kill again?”
“No, never again. As long as I was up there, hiding like a scared rabbit”—that’s exactly what it had been like, quivering and frozen in her dark hole of a mansion—“I didn’t have to kill. Now, out here, I’ll have to. And it’s not just me. Because of me, your brother will have to kill, or his men will have to. Some of your brother’s men may be dead already. I brought death to Tom’s door, even if he always wins against the endless stream of Cooters.”
“I see.” Abby nodded. “Yes, maybe you’re not a coward then, nor a weakling. It takes strength not to kill with all the force at hand when danger comes.” Abby’s gaze lifted from her blade and smiled. “No wonder my brother wants you.”
To her surprise, Mandy felt a smile curl her lips. She really did like the idea of having a new sister.
“You said your vows.”
“But Tom left in the middle of it. We aren’t married.”
“Red says you are. He’s a man of God. He’s probably right about it.”
Sophie's Daughters Trilogy Page 69